3rd Degree the Podcast #262

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Ooh. Ooh. Third degree. The third degree nap, I guess. Third degree. The third degree nap, I guess. Third degree. The third degree nap, I guess. Third degree. Third degree nap, I guess. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Third degree. The podcast is brought to you by soccer 90 Dot. They're your source for FC Dallas, us national team gear and international club gear. Check out all the new national team gear that's just arrived for Copa America and Euro 2024. All the big guns they got all the good stuff. Argentina, France, Germany, Brazil. You name it, they got it. Third degree listener. Of course, you get 20% off the discount in store or online. Simply mission third degree at checkout or use that code. Third degree at checkout on suckernight.com. Get that discount. Some exclusions may apply. Third degree. The podcast is also brought to you by the Lindstrom law firm. For wills, trust, probates and business law. Call 469-515-2559 that's 469-515-2559 or visit lindstromlawfirm.com for a free consultation. [00:01:15] Speaker A: Well, hello there, FC Dallas. Curious fan. Welcome to episode 262 of Third Degree, the podcast. Hello once again. It is me, Peter, with my two Dallas soccer talking buddies. First off, it is Dan Crook. Howdy, Dan. [00:01:33] Speaker C: Good evening. [00:01:35] Speaker A: Good evening to you as well, sir. And your hero, my hero. Everybody's hero. Editor, founder of Third Degree.net, and the original soccer influencer himself, Buzz Kerik. Come in, Buzz. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Hi, fellas. Peter. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Whoa. What's this? Wonderful. What is this awesome sounding microphone and audio quality we're getting today? [00:01:59] Speaker B: I was gonna say I'm in a weird headspace because I woke up in my own house yesterday. Weirded me out. [00:02:06] Speaker A: We're getting the full fidelity of the dulcet tones of one buzz kerrick. [00:02:10] Speaker B: High fidelity, sir. High fidelity. [00:02:12] Speaker A: Okay, okay. Same thing to me. Whatever. Well, guys, let's do this. We've got a lot to discuss. Dallas has been very busy since the last time we spoke a week ago. They have played a league game and an open cup game, and from that we have a three one loss up in Canada to Toronto and a one nothing win over USL championship side Memphis 901. Buzz? [00:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah? [00:02:42] Speaker A: I don't know where to go with this. I want. Here's the thing. I feel like part of our responsibility for the curious is to try to find the upbeat and positive side in what is largely turning out to be a really crummy season. So I'm going to follow your lead, sir. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Well, my number one takeaway from these last two games is that this team's got a bunch of dudes. That's a technical term. A dude. [00:03:09] Speaker C: I thought you're gonna say that's it. They've got a bunch of dudes. [00:03:12] Speaker B: They got a bunch of dudes. And what I mean by that is that in Major League soccer, most teams are made up of a bunch of dudes. And then you add in some spice and you can be good. Dallas doesn't have any spice. They just got dudes. So when you watch them, you know, rest the most spiciest players they have, which in this case is Yara, Mindy and Ferrer, when they rest those guys, to play in the open cup, you get a bunch of dudes running around and then you get a boring game and a dominating performance by the other team who wins three one. And then you come back to the open cup a couple days later and you put in the spiciest guys you have and it's pretty much just a bunch of dudes still. And you play a bunch of other dudes and you win one. Nothing. [00:03:56] Speaker C: So just to confirm, are you saying in a hidden way that Dan Hunt seasons his food with mayonnaise? [00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just saying that, like, you know, FC Dallas has an entire roster filler full of roster filler. It's what they've got. There's no elite talent right now. Even Jesus Ferrer right now since the Gold cup a year ago is just a dude. Yarming is 34. He's just a dude at this point. You know, Paul Aero is a dude. You know, Musa's probably better than a dude, but if he can get the ball that he can't, so he makes him a dude. [00:04:29] Speaker A: I'm starting to wonder if he's even more than a dude. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Well, I watch him play and I think he actually has it. I just think that they can't get him the ball because they don't have anybody in midfield. [00:04:39] Speaker A: So how does he end up not hitting a goal last night against the USL championship side? Because he had plenty of opportunities and at least he had a enough opportunities in the little bit of the game that I watched last night. I watched like the 40, the last 40 minutes, 35 minutes of the first half. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Well, dude is infectious. It's a catchable disease. [00:05:00] Speaker C: How many times did you watch the big Lebowski when you were away? [00:05:04] Speaker B: I know, I just was watching these two games and I was just struck by the fact that, like, there's. It's just an entire roster filled with just your average MLS player. [00:05:12] Speaker A: I totally agree with you. [00:05:14] Speaker B: So it's like, you know, I don't know what you want out of this team. You know, like Tafari, who's we is one of the best players they have, is just like far outside fringe national team, right? They are. Mindy, who at one point was, of course, a spectacular player and mentally is still a spectacular player, but he's 34, he just cannot cover the ground than he used to and he's by himself. Like, I was particularly looking at the, the four across the midfield against Tampa Bay and that was. [00:05:41] Speaker A: You mean against Memphis? [00:05:42] Speaker B: I'm sorry, yes. No, no, no, no. I said Tampa Bay. I meant. I meant Toronto. Oh, tease Toronto. So they started with far fan, who's a solid average MLS outside defender. Delgado, who's a 20 year old holding mid, Frazier, who's a 26 year old holding mid, and Tumasi, who's a solid. Okay, defending outside field, there's. It's just a bunch of dudes right across the middle. And so, like, the entire first, like 60 minutes against that, against Toronto, they couldn't do anything. They couldn't build out, they couldn't get. They just got turned back over and over and over again. There was no one that could build the ball forward to the front line. You know, no one up front, either Ariel or Kamilo, wasn't doing Jack's shit. So Musa just stood up there by himself for like 90 minutes and never saw the ball. It's like, it's just a bunch of guys who can't do anything without any elite players around them to raise the elevation of the team. They finally brought in Yara Mindy, and the game immediately got a better. The Dallas immediately looked better. It looked decent. But like, then, your honor, Mini was on an island. They just put a triple box around him and triple teamed him the rest of the game and he wasn't able to really do anything. So it's just a bunch of dudes out there at this point. So it's like, you know, you can, you can point at Coach Nico all you want, but it's like, what do you want him to do? He's not a magician, he's a first guy in his first ever job. Here we go. It's like, you know, if you have. If you have two teams at the top of the Bundesliga, like Bayern Munich and Dortmund, the difference between the talent of those two teams is very, very small. In that case, a really great coach will make one of them slightly better than the other, perhaps, and you might win a championship. But if you're 1860 Munich and you go out there on the field with those guys. I don't care if peps in charge, you're going to get smoked. And that's what Dallas does most of the time, is put out 1860 Munich and they get smoked. So that's where we are with this team. You know, it's going to be a season of that. [00:07:36] Speaker A: I love it when Buzz comes to my side. [00:07:39] Speaker B: Well, I certainly think that coach Nico has definitely made some many mistakes and I think he's continuing to making mistakes, but he's not entirely responsible because remember, we did this breakdown earlier in the year where he's the same guy that was getting like 1.8 points per game and had the team in third place at the end of the season after his first season. Right? Was he a terrible coach then when he took an underperforming roster and elevated into the top six teams in the league? No. Just like he's not terrible coach now. He's not a great coach. He's just a dude coaching the team. But the dudes. [00:08:11] Speaker A: But the difference between then and now is a drop off in the overall quality in the roster. And whatever supposed quality that remains on the roster today is completely lost all form. [00:08:24] Speaker B: Yeah. When you combine that with the fall off in Jesus Ferrera, the fall off of Pallariola Paulo, the fall off in Sebastian Leggette, the fall, the injury to Alan Velasco, you know, Nicosia's taking a step back, pause the stick and step back. So it's like the roster has degraded. Everyone's getting older, you know, it's not his fault that he got settled with his team. It is his fault that he can't coach this team from 13th to 9th. But, you know, that's. That's a totally different question. It's like you just, you watch these two games, you watch them play against Memphis 901. Yeah, I'm excited. They gotta win. But I couldn't tell the difference between those two teams on the field playing in terms of talent. And I'm like, you're talking about us. Just a medium, not even a good USL championship team, like a plate team that's in about the same position as Dallas is in their league. So it's like they weren't any better. Like you, you should have been able to look at the Dallas roster and look at their roster and go, Dallas is going to smoke when they're going to walk the floor for. For nothing. Nope. [00:09:17] Speaker A: Dan, for entertainment purposes, would you like to disagree with any of this? [00:09:22] Speaker C: Sorry, I'm just still in shock. I've never heard the word dude said so many times. [00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:28] Speaker A: Well, by the way, I think we now officially know what the. The brand new mascot of FC Dallas is. The FC Dallas dudes. [00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah, the big Lebowski, maybe. So. [00:09:40] Speaker A: Back to you, Dan. Would you like to disagree and spice up the conversation before I get in and dig in with buzz on my on, on clenching arms and standing side by side that this is mostly a roster problem and a roster construction problem? [00:09:56] Speaker C: No, no. I'm definitely in the Zenota's at fault camp. You know, could Niko probably figure out a way to make better use of the little p. The few pieces he has? Yeah, probably. But, I mean, you've kind of made that point on discord, right? He's. He's going for defense first and trying to stop the glut of goals and then whatever else comes, comes. [00:10:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So let me. Let me clarify what Dan is referencing. So, once again, for those listening that are not participants in Buzz's discord, join it. Yeah, join. It's a good place to talk and have a discourse about all things. All things burn. And what I posted up there was. Was trying to throw in this longstanding theory that I've been proposing for a while now that this problem is not really about Niko as much as it is about a really poor roster construction and people going back and forth and being mad about Niko being, you know, putting out a defensive team. And I keep trying to look at this team through the lens of Niko Estevez as to why would you play this formation? Why would you do this? And I've come to the conclusion it's because he doesn't trust his roster to do anything more adventurous to this. But, but, and I saw, and it was interesting, was that watching that game last night, the open cup game on YouTube, and that single, mostly single camera angle that they just kept showing from the top of the 106 section, that's a really good angle to see the game from. It's a really good tactical view. And what I saw was a team that repeatedly found itself in really good opportunities once they got the ball past midfield and immediately one of three or four things would happen. Nobody would make, nobody would move. Like at one point, Memphis had dropped itself into a low block and Dallas could not do anything. And because nobody was even trying to make a move and to run into space, and it was so obvious and so bad, the commentator actually started clowning on Dallas about it. He made a whole commentary about it. Two, nobody's brave enough to make an attacking pass. More times than not, they play a ball around the side and then they just play. They just pass it backwards or laterally, not because I think that's the direction or the directive as much as it is. I just don't think there's enough creativity or bravery or confidence to make those passes. Three. Sometimes when somebody does make the pass or tries to make a pass, a lot of the passes is just poor. And the first touch on a lot of these guys is really, really brutal. And I guess the point I'm trying to make is, is that there's just a lot of lack of, just total quality on this roster that I think exacerbates the negative conservative formation that Niko puts this team in because he is so afraid to open this team up. And his only salvation to keeping his job long term is to what Buzz has said all along, grind out whatever results he can get, whether that's a draw or a win. And that's how you end up with what is one of the worst teams in Dallas history since the hunts took over. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny. It took us a long time to really wrap our minds around what was initially a joke, that he coaches like a mid table spanish team and that's what he does because that's basically what he has. And this is like my revelation that it's just team full of dudes. You know, there's a lot of pair parity in this league. A lot of teams are very similar, and the teams are made up of this core, most of them of these average guys that can handle the level of play in this league. And. But that's what I mean about Dallas is the entire team is, is now like that. Now the question is, and this is the important question, Peter, really is like, have they gotten to be this way? Because they were always just dudes that Zada went and got got dudes and they, or they were nicer than this and they've regressed that. They regressed because they're just getting older or has it been coached out of them? And I know that on some levels, you know, players are pretty pro political. Like, they're not going to say, like, quite open what they feel to somebody like me or to even when you get to know them a little bit. But if you talk to people that do know them, you know more. They're more open with those people. And so you hear secondhand sometimes a lot of the kind of conversations that are going on, which is like, you know, there's this preaching of this defensive first mentality and players that we wonder about, well, how come when that guy was with this team or that team, he did this kind of thing and that kind of thing, why does he not do that now? And it's because they're drilled aggressively into this heavy, heavy defensive responsibility. And I think this is the. Where I think Niko is making some of the mistakes a number one. The formation, the tactical formation is wrong because the roster was built for a different one, which is costing him significantly, but also that he's so heavily reinforcing this defensive first mentality that a lot of time, guys are afraid to make mistakes and they're afraid to venture forward, or they're. They try a little something and give up really quickly on it because the defensive responsibility is more important. And so then they don't go forward and so they don't try interesting things. And you can see that. I think, in particular with somebody like this is the best example I come up with is Liam Frazier. When Liam Frazier is playing next to Patrickson Delgado. Liam Frazier is very conservative and very negative and very passive, and he plays very. Stays at home, isn't going anywhere, and trying interesting passes. The minute they put Erra Mindy in there, it's like he wakes up and flips the switch. Now he's got, er, Mindy. So he's like, oh, now I can try stuff. And so he makes these. He's twice the player when you are, Mindy is in there. And so it's such a clear example to me of, like, he's so conservative and worried when he doesn't have somebody next to him who's a world class player, you know, except he's 34. So this team has issues, you know, all up and down its roster, some of which are, I want to bring up again later, which is another worry of mine that goes way past even just this season. [00:15:49] Speaker A: So I agree with you, Buzz, I think. But I. But I think the question as to why Niko feels that way is based in the reality of just he is that he doesn't see that he has a roster that can do anything other than this. So that's why he drills a conservative mentality into these guys, is because he doesn't think they can do it any other way. And I think that the building blocks of that is the consistent lack of quality that we see in terms of first touch, smart attack, of pat attacking, passing, and a lack of runs into space and people just not brave enough to do those things. And ultimately, what I really, ultimately think this is about is an overall culture of mediocrity that has been pervasive in this club for some time, that starts at the very, very top and works its way down from there. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Look at it this way. This blew my mind. I'm like, number one, that Niko had enough confidence in his job position that he rested Jesus Ferreira and Asir Yar Mendy from a league game to play them in an open cup game, so that the balls that takes number one and number two, that he so needed the cup game, that he took his two best players and felt like he needed to rest them in order to take on a USL team, that you couldn't smoke a USL team, missing those two guys, that you needed to have them to win this game and. [00:17:11] Speaker A: But here's the. Here's the most. Here's the most damning part of that buzz. You put them in the game and you still didn't smoke them. It took a dodgy, nonvarred goal that may, in a VAR world, have been called as a handball. Look up. Dallas is lucky that Patterson Delgado wasn't thrown out of that game in the first half of the two footed lunge. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:34] Speaker A: That's a red card all day long in a VAR world. You and I both know that, right? [00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:40] Speaker C: I don't know how the ref missed that. [00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:42] Speaker A: If I. If I'm Memphis, I'm pissed. He wasn't given a red card for that. [00:17:46] Speaker B: Well, that dude was pissed that he found. [00:17:48] Speaker A: Well, look, that dude. Look, that. That guy, I don't know which player it was. He's lucky he had the agility to jump out of that tackle because if he doesn't, I think Delgado breaks something on him. [00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's Dylan Borjacque. I mean, he's a solid player, but he was. He definitely was crying the river about that, quite rightly. But, you know. Yeah, listen, the game, I was so frustrated at halftime, watching a team that should be. Should be, quote, air quote, better was just playing this passive, conservative, defensive, don't give up a goal mentality. I'm like, man, why aren't you going at these guys and causing them to panic in their boots, you know, why are you acting like they're better than you? It's just. It blew my mind. [00:18:34] Speaker A: But this is what I'm frustrated by. This game they played in Memphis's half of the field for the vast, vast majority of the game, and they creativity. The creativity to do anything with that possession was zero. And you had all of your best players out there and you still couldn't do anything with the ball. I've said this from the beginning, when I. When I went and saw them for the very first time this season, and I said it last season, two, when they get the ball, they look like a team of guys that do have zero idea what to do with it. When they have the ball at their feet, they have no. There's no. And, again, this is Niko's fault, but I I do believe there's also a quality issue, and this is about a roster construction issue way more than it's about Niko, because I refuse to believe that Niko, in training goes, no, no, no, don't go. Run into that space. No, no, no. Don't make that pass into that open space. No, no, no. Don't put the ball to his feet. Like, all of the basics just aren't. Those aren't even there. And. And I think that's, again, not to beat a dead horse. The. The basis of why he runs this team the way he does, I think. [00:19:41] Speaker C: Technically, I was beating a dead dude. [00:19:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Sorry. Beating a dead dude. [00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah. There's no horses involved here. [00:19:46] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm not saying he says. He says, don't try stuff. I just think that, like, you, like, I watched the first half of that game, and there was no sense of adventure. Like, everyone was worried more about don't give up anything than they were about actually trying to do anything. [00:20:04] Speaker A: I agree. CKI and zebling is a great example of a guy that I just like. They. If he never plays in a Dallas shirt again, along with delgado and I don't like, that would be perfectly fine with me. Finally, Dallas restarts the ball, and they begin a sequence, I think, of four straight one touch passes to get the ball about 20 yards deep into Memphis's half on the left hand side, and sibling is the last guy to touch it. And he has a one touch bass that he can make into open space in the corner for Moosa to run into, and what does he do? Stops, puts his foot on the ball, makes a 180 spin, and plays the ball backwards. [00:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't even know what to say about it because I don't disagree. [00:20:49] Speaker A: It was rough, and. And I see, I. You know, look, I'm not on the field, but it looks like there are plenty of opportunities to play good, smart soccer in the way this team is set up, and people just aren't doing it, and I. You know, and I just. And this is where I start to think that we need to be continuously having a conversation about Dan and Clark Hunt and Andre Zenada. And what is really the plan for this team? Because that's where I begin to. That's where I believe the failure of this current run of form starts. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I don't, you know, I can't contradict anything you're saying. You know, it's like that. They went, they made a conference effort this winter to go out and add dudes. You know, they went out and added Omar. They got Delgado. You know, they brought in, they got Jimmy to re sign at that friendly deal. They got, you know, who else am I missing? [00:21:47] Speaker A: Moussa. [00:21:48] Speaker B: Well, Musa's actually attempt, that's what's so weird is moose is an attempt to do something he never done before and they didn't back it up with anything else. Like, no, you know, they didn't improve the roster in any other ways. And like, with this one, for a long time this winter, we were talking about, where's the ambition, right? Are you going to make this team any better? And then they went and got moose and we were like, oh, so you are. But then that was it. That was all they did. They didn't, they didn't. They tried to make the team more resilient and rather than more exciting and climbing the table, you know, with, with talent and fun and attacking, they decided to climb the table with grit and, and digging in like, like you're a team that was in a relegation battle. Maybe they knew something we didn't. Maybe they knew they had a bad roster. It sure didn't look as bad last year, you know, and this year, the inch, some of the injuries are long term or problem. It doesn't have this as we haven't had quite as much pile on of the short term stuff. Yeah. Some of them are still there, but, like, they've gotten pieces back and the team still looks bad. You know, Jesus came back. Yeah. Mindy came back. Junka, not junk up far. Finn came back and seems to looks bad. It's like, I don't know what they need to do. [00:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think if you just start to add up the mistakes, it all starts to make a lot of sense. So the purchase of Moussa, the mistake of that is, is it's tied to the dependency on gambling the rest of your roster on a series of very high risk players. [00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:16] Speaker A: And we've talked about this. It's not just pom a call, it's legit. It's Areola, it's, it's Ferrea, it's it's. It's Omar Gonzalez. It's a number of guys in critical positions on this team that suddenly now you're gambling that one or two, or in this, Dallas's case, almost all of them don't have some sort of, you know, age or health failure over the course of the season. And the entire season is blown up because of the level of gamble. And I'll. I'll put it this way. If you go back and think about the history of this club since the hunts have taken it over, and specifically since Dan Hunt became the president of this club, he is responsible, by and large, for all the hiring and firing. And, and it just appears that because Dan and Clark Hunt are not soccer guys at their core, right? They're sports businessmen. They count on the people they hire to make decisions. The problem begins with, they're just not hiring the right people to begin with. They're making a lot of really poor decisions on who they hire for these roles. Zenada is a perfect example of this. Sonata may have solved the problem of selling players, but building a roster, in my opinion, he's failed. He's failed terribly. And that's where we've gotten to work. That's the point that we've gotten to today. [00:24:32] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's the core of the issue with Musa, is that he is a player that needs service. And all your guys that are capable of giving him service are either hurt or they've regressed. As you mentioned, you know, Velasquez goes out, Jesus has been out, and seems they've regressed. Paul's regressed. Legend has regressed. Yeah, I. Mindy has been out. Plus, he's 34. You know, like, if you can get some of those pieces back cooking, maybe it won't look like you got a bunch of dudes again. But none of those dudes, none of those guys are performing at a level above the dude level, for lack of a better description. They're just playing out there like there's some just guys running around. And so it's like, you know, I. The. We talked over and over again all the time about how you have to have your DP's and your Tam players perform at a high level. They have to produce. That's what different teams differentiates teams in this league. And all of Dallas's guys that are of that category are either hurt and out for the year, most of it, or they're way underperforming or they're regressing, you know, and it's the same problem as last year, and we had those, remember, there was like seven or eight players up and around near that million dollar level. None were performing next season. Still another performing. So your team's gonna be terrible when none of those guys can play. So that's, that's where we are and it's what we're gonna have because they can't do anything until July. [00:25:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So when Peter said, you know, maybe internally, have they kind of bailed on the season? Right. I got me thinking, how did they sell FC Dallas to Musa if they knew something was coming? Oh, yeah. Hey, come here. At your peak, you know, just approaching your peak age, we're gonna be absolute dog shit this year, but next year we're kind of all in. So I started looking at the, those roster profiles that MLS released, thinking, oh, yeah, I remember, you know, from the roster dance and everything, that there's a bunch of 2024 contracts. Well, not a whole lot of big earners there. You know, you've got like, Eugene answers and, yeah, Patrickson Delgados and Junker and Yarra Mendy Ibiaga, but there's not a ton of high earners that you can get or high earning, underperforming players that you can jettison so you can kind of upgrade to those high functioning dudes or, you know, actual MLS starters. It just kind of seems like, you know, everyone you mentioned as kind of a high earner, underperforming, kind of a liability health wise, is tied down through at least next year. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Yep, it is. You know, I've said a lot lately that this is an outlier of a season for this club because it is. Buzz, you've. You've been drilling this into the curious head for a long time. This club is better than you think. Historically, it's points total is right up there in the top five or six overall in the league. This is an outlier in the same way 2016 was an outlier on the other end of the spectrum. But, and not to be a total downer about it, the current state of this team, it is very hard to see how this thing pulls itself out of the current direction without some sort of just complete, you know, dump of everybody and starting from scratch, which feels like we just did that. Yeah, not too long ago. [00:27:50] Speaker B: Yeah. To follow up on what Dan's talking about, these are the players that are locked down through 2025. Marco Farfan. Sebastian Leggette. Alan Velasco. Jesus Ferreira. Paul Areola. Jose Mulatto. Good luck with that one. Martin Paws. Giovanni Jesus Paxton. Paumicul Logan Farrington, Petter, Moussa and Ennis Sally, by the way, Sally and Musa, both through 2027, before you even get to options. So, like, you know, the core of the team through the next two seasons are these high paid players that are under achieving. You know, the guys that you can actually get rid of. [00:28:24] Speaker A: Guy isn't even on the team. [00:28:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You're still paying him. The dudes that are actually gonna be out of contract and you do what you want with these guys is Tuamasi, Ibiaga, Tafari, Seely, Antonio Carrera, Eugene Anse, Sam Junka, Liam Frazier, Patrick del Dogato and Asir Yari Mindy. So the bulk of those guys are the lower paid players on the team. You know, the ones that you are not easily replaceable with other dudes at the same numbers because those are pretty good contracts. Most of those guys are on, with the possible exception of Yarmindy, but, you know, he's 34, so and it's played at a really high level. So that would be why he would get paid a lot more money. But it just goes to show you that, like, the big money stuff they're, they're stuck with. So, like, the possibility that you can look at 2025 and think it's gonna be different next year, it's not particularly likely, you know, not unless you use one of those buyouts, the extra buyout you're going to get this summer and then use two more buyouts again next year. So you could get out of three of those contracts, maybe. But, you know, they gave those contracts assuming those people were going to be exciting and they were going to be good. So they may still believe in them. Is the thing is, like, that's the, that's part of the problem, too, is like, why do they think these players have fallen off? Do they think that they're just getting old? Do they think it's because they've been hurt? Do they think it's because the coaching. Well, I bet you they're going to think it's because of the injuries or offseason stuff or the fact they're getting old. They're not going to think that it was like they just weren't that good to begin with. So it's hard to know what the mindset is for this team right now. And it's not surprising that they're sticking with a coach in this context whose defensive first mentality may be able to grind them enough points that they're going to be fighting for that last playoff spot, maybe at the very best, you know? Or maybe they're going to make a cup run because he's going to be able to win single knockout games, perhaps. So it's. It's. It's a weird spot. I did. I did have this thought the other day that you remember that this season, coach Nico, Steve has said that he had a contract option that he exercised for this season for 2024. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Yes, I do remember that. [00:30:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So it occurs to me that either a. He might have another one for 2025, or maybe he's out of contract. And are the hunts less likely to make a change on a guy than they would be to ride it out? Because they know they're kind of locked in for next season anyway, and just sort of let this contract finish its course, you know? And even if they did make a change, I don't think that any coach could elevate this squad as it is. More than maybe five places I think you could get it. So, like, from. From 15th, is that where they are to, like, 10th or something? That's about it. I don't know that you could elevate it much more than this. Not without being a radical. I don't even know what it would take, you know? [00:31:15] Speaker A: So if you're Andre Zonata, you gotta be looking at your situation and asking, how. How long before I'm in danger? Because I think we all tend to believe, and I. This is obviously speculation on our part. The solidity of his situation and the fact that he got an extension was built around the fact that he has brought in a lot of financial presence to this team in terms of the selling and stuff. [00:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And promotion. Yeah. [00:31:40] Speaker A: And. And I guess my question is, if you look at the horizon of this club and its current roster, both in terms of the senior team and the academy, where's the next big dollar sale? Is it Jesus Ferreira? [00:31:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Or it could be Velasco if he recovers. [00:32:02] Speaker A: What is. What is an injured Velasco gonna go? [00:32:04] Speaker B: Well, right now, nothing. It would take like, two years. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Okay, well, that's not on the horizon to me, right? [00:32:09] Speaker B: Oh, sure it is. When do you think. You think it's selling Jesus? [00:32:13] Speaker A: Well, by the. At the end of this season. [00:32:15] Speaker B: No one's giving you jack shit for Jesus. [00:32:16] Speaker A: That's my point. That's my point. My point is, is that this isn't a club that's got a player or two or three that are on in anywhere in the next twelve to 18 months that is going to sell for any sort of significant amount of money to start generating the kind of revenue they were back when Chris Richards and Reggie and Pepe and the endless list of players he was cashing big checks in on. [00:32:42] Speaker B: Well, I was trying to say was that the horizon of when you could sell a player is actually the end of 2025, when you might be able to sell Velasco and Jesus probably would become a free agent because unless they picked up his option, of course, maybe then you could sell him, possibly. Unless Jesus rebounds, you're not going to get what you. The money you turn down for Russia, for him, you know, and Velasquez would need a rebound season. And that really is it. You know, pause, maybe. Maybe someone coming for pause, possibly, you know, that's about it. [00:33:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Again, I think it just click you. You've just confirmed my concern for this club, which has largely been dependent on selling players to bring in revenue to buy more players. Musa being the weird exception to that. There is no money. I don't see any dollars coming in on sales. [00:33:29] Speaker B: Well, first let me say that, like, it's possible that with Zanata's promotion, that he's doing something slightly different than it was before, because they brought in a TD right underneath him to be like, I think, more of a hands on reviewer of the rosters in the system. So it's possible. And that just happened a couple of months ago. So I don't think that that guy will impact things until we get to the next window. So we'll have to see if over the next window or two there's an adjustment, maybe, in the way things are being done. The second thing to say about that is that this is actually what I wrote in our format there about. There's a big picture macro problem I see building. [00:34:06] Speaker A: You mean the run. [00:34:07] Speaker B: The crayon red sheet, Ray. [00:34:09] Speaker A: Red to crayon run sheet. [00:34:11] Speaker B: Right. Because. Because they expanded the amount of dudes on this team, the. The top of the supplemental roster, the guys that are eating up all the bench spots, are those guys. They're the Omar Gonzalez's, they're the Seki and siblings. They're guys like that. There's the guys that are there, the Sam Junko's, they're the far fans. They're the Delgado's. They're these guys that fill up the bottom section of the roster that are just dudes and not. I met. I met. Korch is one of those guys. You might argue that Crossante might be one of those guys. The thing is, is that those guys are now filling up the bench or the rotational spots on the first team. And the guys, the kids that they used to bring in and mature and elevate and progress into the MLS first team, those guys are all now in north Texas playing Nolan Tarek Scott, Alejandro Azura, the Scott brother, Malik Henry Scott, Isaiah Parker Endalay, for the most part, Thomas Pondeka. All these guys that they have on the roster that are homegrowns or they're these young kind of signs, they were attempting to prescue the roster, those guys are all playing in North Texas. So that means, yes, North Texas is undefeated. They're winning a lot of games. It also means that zero academy players are playing for North Texas right now. Zero. So you're killing the treadmill, the pipeline. You're killing it because you're no longer progressing. Kids, the very most talented kids in the academy are no longer getting that challenge at North Texas. The guys that are the homegrowns that before in the past, your pacs and your Jesus's that were getting minutes in the first team, they were becoming challenged in that level and they were progressing and becoming players like Tanner that you sold off for money or Brian Reynolds. Those guys are no longer getting those opportunities. They're stuck in North Texas. They're not being challenged. So the developmental pipeline is being killed by what they're doing right now. The sacrificing that they're making in order to try and not lose games in the short term of this season, and maybe even next season, too, perhaps, is destroying the developmental pipeline that was making you money. The very reason you brought in Zonata, to do things, it's a make you profit, is now dead for the short term, as you just said, because of this, the way they're doing it, the way they build this roster, the way they're running this team. So everything that made FC Dallas different and made FC Dallas able to survive higher in the standings than everybody else around the same budgetary level is now not true and now no longer works and no longer functions. And now you're just San Jose in the standings. You know. [00:36:50] Speaker A: Man, how many have just hit pause or stop on the podcast at this point? [00:36:55] Speaker C: Sorry. I did, too. [00:36:57] Speaker B: Yeah, they beat Houston and then they won a cup game. And I actually now am more pessimistic. More pessimistic and more worried about this season than I was two weeks ago. And they actually won a. They actually won two games. I actually think it's worse. [00:37:12] Speaker C: Oh, I mean, yeah, that's understandable. They, you know, I mean, you can put an asterisk next to the Houston game with how long they played down to ten men and they struggled against a terrible lower mid table USL championship team to the point where the big turning point in the game. And, you know, after that game, Nico had said something about making adjustments at halftime. I mean, my observation was honestly that Memphis came out of the break and was like, actually we don't need to sit back. They're terrible. We can win this. Tried to go for it and blew their chance. [00:37:47] Speaker B: I also find it fascinating that like there's been like three or four games now of the last five, I want to say where coaches talked about halftime or second half adjustments and part of those adjustments was going to a four at the back and playing a 4231 or four three three. And I was like, why are you even bothering with this three four three anymore? I don't even understand. You're making it worse with that. [00:38:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I got to stop watching at halftime because I had something else to do and when I got done doing that, I turned on the phone to look to see what the score was and it was exactly what I thought it was going to end up being one nothing because there was no way Dallas was going to put more than one shot in and it was just going to end up being a scrappy game. And that's how it sounded like the second half turned out to be because I didn't see the second half. Boy, what a mess. Goodness gracious. All right, well, I think we've done a really good job of bumming everybody out, but I think. [00:38:46] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:38:46] Speaker A: Well, no, I think it's fair criticism, Buzz, the fact that you're even more pessimistic now after the Houston result and the US Open cup result. And by the way, we are just now learning that Tampa Bay has won that game. So Dallas next open cup game will be in Tampa Bay or literally next door to Tampa Bay on a field next door to the bay in Tampa Bay. Tampa's hosting. Yeah. Aren't they? [00:39:12] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:39:13] Speaker A: I think they are. Yeah, that's what it looks like. It looks like Tampa Bay is going to host that game. [00:39:17] Speaker B: So my. [00:39:18] Speaker C: Yeah, whoever won that tie would host DefC Dallas. [00:39:21] Speaker A: That's what I thought. [00:39:21] Speaker B: I. Yeah, yeah, that could be a. Definitely be a Dallas loss. [00:39:25] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:39:29] Speaker B: Boy, that is not good. [00:39:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I. Look, I don't think any of this is unfair and I think part of our job is to be honest with people about this stuff and not go out of our way to be overly critical. But I feel like this is all fair context for us to discuss without being overly mean about it or. You know what I'm saying, buzz? [00:39:59] Speaker B: Yeah, listen, I'm the most discouraged about the way this team's playing since 2003. Like in 2017, when they collapsed, I understood that collapse. I understood that they signed some older players to make a run at the Concoct Champions League. I understood that when they got quite far in that, but then when they finally got knocked out that that was going to really put a damper on the rest of the season. I understood that all those, some of those older players, that they put a lot of money and not money, put a lot of investment in terms of roster, in terms of relatives. Half of the time when those guys went south, I understood that it was going south and that it was one of the longest losing streaks that oscars, this club's ever seen an Oscar had to deal with. Right. This one is hard to comprehend because it's like, I actually feel like the roster is in a horrible, horrible shape and the coaching decisions are making it worse. They're not making it better. So it's like, it's, you know, it's like the team is terrible, but it's like 80% roster construction and 20%, maybe 70 30 coaching that is causing all this. It's mostly Zenata, but it's, you know, or you know what? Maybe that's not even fair. Maybe it's the hunt philosophy. Yes. Executing to make money by selling all these young players, that has led to them having a roster full of dudes. You know, it probably wasn't like they probably didn't set out to go have a roster full of dudes. They probably set out to have a roster of experience, veteran players that have seen the league a lot. Well, that's fine, except that your tie and talent guys all have fallen apart. So now all you have is dudes. And that's why it's bad. It's like, you know, it's, it was weird. Like last year we had all these players that were not performing. They were getting paid a lot of money, and we got rid of all them. And then all the ones that were left are still now underperforming and now you're stuck with a bunch of guys you're going to have to get rid of. You know, it's like you're going to have to tear this team apart again and it's going to be tough. [00:41:49] Speaker A: Speaker two I think the thing that really bothers me most was that it began, you know, it wasn't that long ago that I began to feel like there was, there was this very quiet reason to feel like Dallas was actually a really kind of progressive club in this league. You know, Lamar, they were, they were. And, you know, Lamar went out and got a stadium built. I know it's not everybody's favorite, and the location, blah, blah, blah, set all that aside. He got it done and saved the team. They were one of the earliest teams to build an academy and they were one of the first teams to start signing homegrown players in bulk. They were one of the first teams to put an academy team out into the universe that made a name for itself that on more than just a national, but even an international stage, people knew who they were and what the logo was and what they represented. They were one of the first to start selling players at a notable clip. A lot of this stuff is now stuff in my mind, buzz that has suddenly, in almost a record amount of time, kind of evaporated or fallen behind a lot of other clubs in MLS. I mean, you know, I think it's been pointed out in multiple places that many MLS teams are using their next pro team for academy players, and Dallas doesn't seem to be using it in that same way. And there are a lot of MLS senior teams that are being able to do rotational tactics with players across the season and they're bringing kids up and kids are playing and producing kind of in the way Dallas used to do it way back in the day with Oscar and Dallas doesn't do that anymore. And so all of this kind of like this position where they were kind of the quietly, quietly the leader in the league has all gone now and they're just, they're just kind of a mid tier, not very good team. [00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think if I, if we were going to go be honest and break down the team player by player by player, there are, there is a good core of these, again, to keep using this term, these dudes that you could use to build a solid team with. You know, there are guys here that have value in terms of an MLS roster build. The problem is the underperforming at the top end and now the fact that you've extended the number of dudes and you forced out the young, developing talent, you force them down the pipeline and backflowed the pipeline, or you sold them off. Or you sold them off. One or the other. Yeah, those guys are gone. I'm talking about the next wave. Like, you're not allowing the next wave to come through, which is now my bigger worry because you're filling the team with too many of this Ross, too much of this roster filler. So if you, if you jettison, you know, ten roster fillers and with the idea that, like, you're going to bring through some of these kids and use them as roster filler, like, for example, like, why is Nolan Norris not playing some of these games instead of Liam Fraser or Patrickson Delgado? Why did you even bring Patrick and Delgado in? You had no Norris. Exact same thing. 20 year old player that you want to develop, just use Norris instead. You know, don't bring in Delgado at all. So, like, and then, and then the other problem that you have to do is you now have to change out the underperforming, high end, high paid players. Because if those, if the high end, high paying players don't perform, your team is terrible. And that's exactly what we're seeing. So there is a way to salvage this team in a short term window and that's how you do it. But, like, it doesn't mean that you're going to, like, if you continue on how you are now, nothing is going to change. It's just going to stagnate. And because you cannot coach up this many dudes to the top of the league just with coaching, particularly when you're still making some poor decisions in your coaching, it's not all bad, just some of the decisions are not right. So it's like, you know, it just makes me incredibly pessimistic when I don't. [00:45:34] Speaker A: See it's more bad than good, though I think is a fair way to put it. [00:45:37] Speaker B: It is more mad than good, but, you know, there is a way out of it. But again, like, if this, how many times have we talked about the idea that, like, you have to be absolutely ruthless in roster building and sometimes they're not. And, like, they're back to the same position. Like the last two seasons, the first season when Niko came in, they were ruthless and they did some aggressive stuff and they brought in some good pieces and that team was good. And then the two winters since then, they have not been ruthless. They have not been aggressive. They've, they've sat, they've stood pat with the hand that they had from that first season. The rest of the league gets better and the rest of the league passes them by, just as we warned them would happen. The last two winners, we've warned them, this is coming and here we are. So, you know, you just can't be static. You can't sell off the best pieces and stick with the leftovers that think you're going to compete. You got to refresh the great ones you saw with great new ones. And it's just, it's so discouraging to watch the team play with no real verve or flare or attack or anything. Even guys that used to have that like what is going on with Jesus Ferreira? That dude was two years ago was a game changing ball of fire. He would destroy people and now he's just a dude. And I don't know whether he's just mad that you can sell them to Russia or what, but he's now barely better than Liam Frazier. Frankly. [00:46:59] Speaker A: That's a hot sports. [00:47:00] Speaker B: That is a hotspur's opinion. But it's. I think it's on. [00:47:02] Speaker A: I love it. All right. Saturday 730 Austin comes to town. Oh boy. You want to preview that at all? [00:47:13] Speaker B: Yeah, because I think you get to make some important decisions. You know, coach played his hand a little bit about what his best team is or in his opinion, because it's what he played in the cup game, which is incredible. Perhaps CKI assembling and Endolea side those were your two sort of rotations. But there he had a quote after the game where he said that they did some player personnel choices over these last two games that would allow them to play as good a roster as they could against Memphis and then be able to play as good a roster again this Saturday gets Austin. So they kind of sacrificed the Toronto game and with some of the stuff they did there in order to peak out against Memphis and Austin. So I think you'll mostly get the same thing you got against Memphis with the possible exceptions of Herbert Andalay and seek and saveling, who I think were given chances to sort of like, okay, you've been, we've been saying if you did this or we might play you. Okay, here's your chance. You know, Jesus being back, you know, maybe Paul Areola has a little bit of something because he, he subbed out at halftime against Toronto and did not come back into this game. So maybe there's something going on there you got to worry about is legit back. That's a factor of course. You know, so really those are your, those are your choices. I thought Bernie looked pretty good at wingback when he came in. I actually wouldn't mind starting him and wingback versus Austin and then the you have to decide who's going to get that other spot up front because you assume c won't be in there again. Who's going to be the third guy with Jesus and Musa? Is it going to be more of a midfielder kind of guy, like if legit, serve it healthy or isola healthy. So that way Jesus moves up top. Or does Logan Farrington deserve a start because he played pretty decently and scored? So then you have Musa fares in up top and that puts Jesus a little more underneath because otherwise it's basically going to be the lineup against Memphis minus, minus those one or two changes. When you take out, I probably likely take out an indole and sibling and really that's the team you're going to have. You know, it'll either be Frazier or Delgado. With Yara Mindy, I'm going to assume Frazier because I think Fraser is a little bit better than Delgado at this point, and that's about it. [00:49:24] Speaker A: All right, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Dan. [00:49:26] Speaker C: No, I was just saying yay. Because that sounds so delightful. [00:49:32] Speaker B: I mean, it is what it is. I mean, he basically said like, they're going for it in the cup. Like, because, you know, it's the five wins and you've got a championship thing. So it's like they're putting most all their horses with a tiny bit of rotation in there and then again it comes back to who's healthy. You know, we won't know that until we see the injury report because we can't go to practice because there's no open practices between now in the weekend. [00:49:52] Speaker C: So I don't know if the stuff from the press conference was, like the full thing or not, but Niko's answer about the rotation was basically because I asked him if he played a strong team because he's under pressure. [00:50:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:11] Speaker A: And what do you say? [00:50:13] Speaker C: He just got. He was really weirdly happy, but just went into. Yeah. Talking about rotations and getting players up and, you know. Yeah. Trying to. Trying to take the cup seriously, but he also, you know, had this really impassioned thing about, you know, loving the cup and cups in general and asked Logan Farrington about the cup and he was like, you know, really super thrilled about it. So, yeah, it's good to see with all the MLS stuff, you know, at least the players and coaches are still very rah, rah. Open cup. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Did you guys see the tweet that the Open Cup Twitter account posted in reaction to FC Dallas's the Lamar hunt Open cup means everything to us. [00:51:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I did. I retweeted it. [00:51:06] Speaker A: So what do you know? Say that again. Did you not see this, Dan? No, I'm trying to find it right now because. That's right. So Dallas posted an image of Lamar the Lamar statue and tweeted the Lamar hunt US Open cup always will always mean more into more to us. And the US Open cup account, not the official one, the one that does all the media coverage, then said, well, then I'm sure Clark Hunt will gladly share how he voted at the board of governors meeting in December. [00:51:37] Speaker C: Oh, you mean the cop dot us? [00:51:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:39] Speaker A: Yes. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Not the official one. That's an independent website, Peter. [00:51:43] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I know that, but my. [00:51:45] Speaker B: But. [00:51:45] Speaker A: But I think it's a valid point. [00:51:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's why I retweeted it. [00:51:50] Speaker A: Yes, I know, but I want to share that with everybody listening to the podcast because it is talking out of both sides of their mouth. I mean, you know, it is what it is. It's a very uncomfortable and weird situation. [00:52:03] Speaker B: Oh. I've been saying for multiple, maybe five years now that despite the fact that hunts always say that they care a lot about the open cup, their actions indicate that they tell us otherwise. Yeah, they do not take it seriously. You know, if it sounds like maybe nico is. That's awesome. I would love for him to take it seriously because the hunts clearly do not take it seriously. They would like to bury the damn thing. You know, I'm. The funny thing about that bit is I'm quite sure the Clark is one of the owners that's voting against the open country up. [00:52:34] Speaker A: All right, can we set aside all the awfulness that is the current state of the burn right now and talk about something completely different? [00:52:42] Speaker B: Everybody else turned the podcast off already anyway, so go ahead, speaker zero tomorrow. [00:52:46] Speaker A: By the time people are listening to this, we probably will finally have heard the official reveal that a Super League women's team is coming to play in Dallas and they will play at the cotton bowl. I do not know. I. I know there are people that have seen the branding, the name, the badge. I have seen and heard nothing. I have no clue what any of this is. The Cotton bowl news was broken by one of the news affiliates because it was part of a Dallas city council agenda that was voted on today. Dan, was it? [00:53:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Passport in to nothing. [00:53:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So it passed. Which means the city basically is ginning up some dollars to help pay for all of this. It's a two year deal. Uh, it is a super League team. And to be clear, the hierarchy of this within the US Soccer Federation structure is this is a league that will be on equal footing to the NWSL. So unlike MLS being tier one and USL championship being tier two, the Super League and the NWSL are on the same level in that same structure on the women's side of the game. So Dan, you were the one that made a surprise appearance on a local news affiliate yesterday. You're the expert on this topic. What can you tell us? [00:54:02] Speaker C: Not a whole lot. It's going to be difficult. Obviously the team's supposed to start playing August. They don't even have a name yet. They don't have any players yet. It's a league that we saw it play out with USL League one that first season where it was FC Dallas thought the competition was going to be a near USL championship level and the rest of the league was worse than MLS. Next pro is right now. USL just had the W League, the second division women's league in the last couple years. And the problem they always have with the women's leagues, whether it's WPSL or any of the predecessors, is you get a handful of really good teams and then a ton of really bad teams that the infrastructure just isn't there. [00:55:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:02] Speaker C: Even when FC Dallas played in WPSL, when it was a really good team, they went to the playoffs one year and they had to get a motel six and sleep six to a room just to go to the playoff game. It's how good is that league going to be? Because division one sanctioning doesn't really mean anything if you a can't get the level of players that you can from NWSL and B if the, you know, we're talking about pro teams and everything, but are they going to be pro teams really? Or are they just going to be semi pro teams paying expenses that get that same quality in return? [00:55:43] Speaker A: I think the fascinating exercise that this is going to prove out is the argument that we've been making a long time about. See Dallas playing up in Frisco, which is it's not a location issue as a product issue, because now there's going to, in theory, be a top level professional soccer club playing in what is, I would assume by any metric, the ideal location, which is a downtown space with mass transit literally next door to it. And we'll see how many people decide to buy season tickets for that. There are a lot of people that have been squawking that they don't go to Dallas games because that's all the way up in Frisco, that now it's their opportunity to prove out what they've been the reason why they haven't been willing to go support Dallas. [00:56:31] Speaker C: You know, I mean, unfortunately, those people that that could be literally next door to the house and they still wouldn't go. [00:56:37] Speaker A: No, I agree. I agree. But I'm talking about the other. I'm not talking about the people that just hate MLS for hating mls and would never go in, period. I'm talking about the people that legitimately say, look, it's just too far away. I don't want to do that. Well, here's now an opportunity for you to, to support a local soccer team. And I, and I suspect what will end up playing out of this is that a lot of people won't. Just simply because it's not very good yet and it will take a while for it and they're not willing to spend their dollars that way. Did we. And I guess we haven't heard anything about ticket pricing or anything like that yet either. [00:57:09] Speaker B: Oh, no, we don't have a brand name yet. [00:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that's true. [00:57:12] Speaker C: I mean, the thing is, you know, you could take NWSL, price them, right? High teens, tops. You know, if they go above that, that's going to be kind of an issue. [00:57:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I'll be interested to see how many of the women that we see play around in the local leagues around here end up getting, making up the bulk of this team. [00:57:34] Speaker C: That's the thing. There is a massive level of talent in the area. You look around NWSL, obviously you've got Jaden Shaw, you've got Raina Reyes playing a Portland place for Mexico. Deanna Adonia, Houston Dash and Mexico. You've got Katie Londa racing Louisville. [00:57:57] Speaker A: The girl that's up at the rain, what's her name? The girl that was going to go to UCLA or USC and ended up signing with the Seattle rain. I can't remember her name off the top of my head. She played for solar. [00:58:11] Speaker B: I don't either. [00:58:12] Speaker A: Yeah, she's a baller. I'll look it up. [00:58:15] Speaker C: But yeah, you know, you've got players like that, players like Taran Torres. There's a lot of successful players from the area that's got into the game and a lot of other ones. Chelsea Washington, Chelsea Surprise, Julie Doyle. The players who've played a really good level in NWSL and, you know, the kind of job security of it and the ability to make money off it has kind of, you know, pulled them away from the game. If this team can, can be a place that, that sort of, that level of player can play and make a living or even make a, you know, aside a bit of side money and, and have a weekend hobby still, you know, that's, that's exciting for the city. It's just they, they have to find that core level of soccer fan that's kind of beyond the, hey, we get up at 09:00 a.m. And drink a beer because it's really cool to watch the Premier League and not really understand that soccer is an actual thing that you go to watch in person. [00:59:14] Speaker B: Yeah, if you. If you could get dialed in with the top female clubs here in the market, solar, for sure. FC Dallas, definitely involved in that conversation. Is there BBB? There are multiple other clubs that produce excellent, excellent women's sides, but the, you know, solar and Se Dallas are the top two. Of course, if you could tap into those markets, you're looking at like four, five, six, you know, easily professional level. If not, you know, in the national league pool every single year. Like the Dallas U 17 team, which is really still loaded as three us girls and one Mexico youth now player solar the year before has like three or four. There's like, ut is just chock full of amazing solar players. A and M's program is absolutely chock full of amazing players from this area. I mean, you could literally turn out one of the greatest female soccer pipelines in the world out of this market. It's ridiculous how a sound comes out. [01:00:06] Speaker C: Of here and that, that also drives a crowd because those younger players and families will go to those games. When, when the FC Dallas. When FC Dallas pissed off the women's team and it kind of went independent, they played a couple of friendlies, they had tigress, they had Houston Dash. And, you know, even at Doctor Pink Field there were, you know, there was over a thousand people there. They went down to, I think was Bishop Lynch, a couple of thousand there. They had a little showcase with a couple of the college teams. They had something like 4000 there that there are those people that are willing to watch the games. It's just kind of firstly bringing them in and making sure that they. They buy season tickets, they buy jerseys, they come back for more and they stay. [01:00:48] Speaker A: Emery Adams, by the way, that's her name. She. [01:00:52] Speaker C: Yeah, she's on the US under twenties, right? [01:00:55] Speaker A: I think so, yeah. She. She was going out to play in California in college, and she decided she got an offer to go play in Seattle. And so she's played with them. And I think she started recently a couple of games. [01:01:06] Speaker C: So it's funny, actually, us soccer released media guides for all the national teams the other day. I was looking through a couple of them today and like, on the women's side, the 17s there are in their named national pool. So the players have been called up since the start of the year. Oh, sorry. Yeah, since the start of the year there were, I think eight players from DFW. [01:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's funny. Tomorrow or by the time people listen to this, the part that I'm most fascinated to know is if they have a plan for a stadium because obviously the cotton ball can't be a long term solution. And uh, for them both in terms of cost and what will ultimately have to cost them money. And just the, it's a 92,000 seat stadium that is going to host games that, you know, what are we going to anticipate once things settle down? A couple of thousand a game, tops maybe. You know, it's, it's going to be a weird setup. Um, I mean, I don't know, Buzz, do you have higher expectations than that for attendance? [01:02:09] Speaker B: Oh, they better rob out of them that they're not going to last very long. [01:02:12] Speaker A: You think? [01:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:14] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. I mean, the average, the average NWSL attendance last year I think was right at 11,000. [01:02:23] Speaker C: And that's boosted by Portland and Seattle putting in 20. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So I don't know, man, if they, if they're able to pull a couple of thousand a game, I think they're, I don't know. My point being is I hope they announce a stadium plan or some give some sort of hint that they've got something in the works. So that would, that would, that would probably help their cause. So there we go. [01:02:47] Speaker B: Well, here's, here's, here's last year's attendance number. The average in the league is 10,000 a game announced. Like you said, the top team, San Diego Wave, average 20,000 last year and the bottom team, Chicago, averaged 5000. [01:03:00] Speaker A: Is that taking Portland out of the mix? [01:03:02] Speaker B: Portland is 18,000, Angel City 19,000, Elena Rain 13,000 and Casey current 11,000. So like if you average 1000 people or 2000 people, you're going to be out of business about five minutes. You have to, you have to, if you're going to try and compete at the end of your cell level like they're claiming to, you need to be averaging at least 5000 to be the worst team in the league at 5000. You need average like 10,000 to be viable. [01:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. That's, I don't know if that's viable. In season one, Houston Dash does 6000. [01:03:32] Speaker B: Well, maybe it'll be like MLS teams where the new teams do crazy numbers and the old team suck. [01:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe. [01:03:39] Speaker C: I think the interesting thing from, at least from a league perspective, is you think about NWSL, right? They've had the benefit or they had the benefit for so many years of us soccer kind of backing up any of the losses. Does USL really have the clout to do that, to cover the Super League, the W League, the academy league, and then kind of worry about things like USL League Two and one taken over in the championship? You know, can they really spread themselves out then? [01:04:14] Speaker A: I don't know. I mean, I think it's all fascinating to see. I think it's really interesting that us soccer has decided to give equal footing to these two leagues and just said, okay, you guys have at it. I mean, ultimately I think we all know how this ends. Is there some sort of merging of the two leagues and kind of the old NFL model where they ends up being one larger league? Which would be great and fine, but it, how that plays out over a period of time is, I think will be interesting to watch and what, what teams are successful and which ones aren't. It'll be fun to watch some games at the Cotton bowl again, that's for sure. [01:04:52] Speaker B: By the way, New Mexico United knocked off real Salt Lake four two in the open cup today. Oh, yeah. [01:04:57] Speaker A: It's weird. You know, Houston lost to Detroit. It was Detroit that Houston lost. Yeah. And, and real Salt Lake lost. And there are always upsets in the cup. Cup sets, I'm told they're called. But it, and it's funny that Houston loses, Salt Lake loses. And we're all been out of shape about Dallas when they win. [01:05:17] Speaker B: Well, Dallas feel their full best lineup. [01:05:20] Speaker A: Yes. [01:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And reason we care about the RSL game is because Eric Quill coaches New Mexico United. [01:05:24] Speaker A: Ah, okay. Well, anything else, boys? I think we've ranted and raved and lost most of the listenership. [01:05:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Because we depressed everybody. We're just trying to pass off our vibes. [01:05:36] Speaker A: Dan, you got anything else? [01:05:38] Speaker C: No, I'm looking forward to the, the women's team announcement tomorrow. And honestly, you know, I'm looking forward to going to, going to a few of their games, going on the dark, getting down at Fair park and, you know, having a nice accessible game. [01:05:53] Speaker A: We'll have to make a third degree trip of it for opening day, whenever that is for sure. Unless it's, unless it's in the middle of the day in August. Maybe we'll wait till later in the season or nightmare, we retreat to the press box. [01:06:08] Speaker B: I will say one thing is like, I am obviously not a women's football expert by any stretch of imagination. We really could use somebody that would really, really fascinated and knowledgeable about women's soccer that could write about this team. So if anyone's interested, reach out. Otherwise I'll be having to do my very best, which is not necessarily optimistic about that because that's not my ball of wax. But um, Dan does it way more than I do. But Dan can barely keep up with SC Dallas with his workload, so we're, we're hiring if that helps. [01:06:39] Speaker C: They, they might take precedence over FC Dallas. [01:06:43] Speaker A: You may not want to call it. [01:06:44] Speaker B: Hiring because I'll pay you the exact same thing I pay everybody else. [01:06:49] Speaker C: Experience. [01:06:50] Speaker A: It would be fun to have somebody on the podcast that knows what they're talking about. That would be for sure. [01:06:55] Speaker B: I mean, Dan knows his women's soccer, but he's busy. We need somebody like as nausical as Dan that has the time to do it. That's hard to find. [01:07:03] Speaker A: 100%. I totally get it. I want to say one more thing before we go. I want for anybody that has been brave enough to stick through this entire podcast, I want to reiterate that now is the time, more than ever, that as fans of this club, we all have to believe that somehow, some way, this will eventually get better, because it has to, right? And ultimately, listen to me. You know, I think if there's one thing to hold on to out of this is that for Dan and Clark Hunt, ultimately what they can have not afford to have happen is crater all of the work that they have worked so hard at achieving, overcoming the attendance issues of this club. And that is, and if there's anything that gives me an array of hope and promise that a solution will happen faster than we think it is, is because they know they are on limited time to salvaging that project that they have worked so hard to achieve the results they've gotten in the last two and a half years. So, you know, let's all stick together on this. There's still our club, we still love the club, we still support the club, but we're also not afraid to tell everybody and the people that run it how we feel about the current state of things. How's that? [01:08:17] Speaker B: That's totally 100% fair. The only thing I would say about that is that I worry that the hunter would just ride it out because they don't want to spend the four or $500,000 it would cost to change the coach, or the TD for that matter, because they literally just gave him a raise and a bonus and a promotion. [01:08:38] Speaker A: So that's thanks for ruining my pep talk. Buzzkill. [01:08:41] Speaker B: Well, I know I'm on full buzz kill mode. I'm telling you, I have not been this. This bummed about the state of the team since 2003. It's better than 2003. [01:08:51] Speaker A: I'm going to text Amy and ask her to do something nice for you. [01:08:55] Speaker B: I'm going to. I'm going to wheel it back for you, in fact, because Dan won't remember this, and I'll have to remember in the back end of 2003 before, and they fired Jeffries. They allowed Jeffreys to make some trades to try and salvage the team. And he made some three or four high profile, big trades, and they were all utter disasters and completely awful trades that completely gutted the team, and they were horrific, and it never should have happened. So that's my worry, is that they'll let him, coach Nico and Andre Zanata try and salvage this thing and the next window, and they'll just do some incredibly dumb ass shit that'll actually handicap the team for even longer then because of that, you know, that they. They handed Clark Hunt. Clark Hunt. Colin clark. A worse scenario than they would have if they just gotten rid of Jeffrey's rather than let. Because to be honest, it wasn't Jeffrey's fault. It was Hunt's fault. [01:09:53] Speaker A: Right. [01:09:54] Speaker B: Stadium. Just as this one's not Nico's fault. 100%. [01:09:57] Speaker A: Right. [01:09:58] Speaker B: So we're gonna have to be on watch to be like, we're gonna call crap. It's crap. We're gonna call it crap. And when it's good, we call it good. So that's what we're going to do the rest of the way. Hopefully, there'll be some things that are dreaming value. Like, I thought, I'm. Here's my ray of session at the. [01:10:12] Speaker A: End of the game. [01:10:12] Speaker B: I thought Bernie Kamugo looked better, so I'm actually willing to keep going with him at the wingback thing because I thought he looked better this time than he has all season. So keep going, I guess, on that. [01:10:23] Speaker A: All right. And with that, I think we will close this not fun chapter. Episode 262 of Third Degree the podcast thanks, Dan. It's always good to talk to you. [01:10:35] Speaker C: I hope things get better. [01:10:37] Speaker A: I look forward to your reporting from tomorrow's event. And buzz, I appreciate your honesty, sir. [01:10:44] Speaker B: Thanks, man. Hopefully you're looking forward to my reporting for tomorrow's event since Dan will be at work. [01:10:48] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. You're going. Not Dan's going. Sorry. [01:10:51] Speaker C: I can send you some code and. [01:10:52] Speaker A: Stuff if you want. To look at that about as much. [01:10:55] Speaker C: As I'm writing tomorrow. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Please send me your code and I'll run it through chat, GTP or something. [01:11:03] Speaker B: Third degree the podcast is brought to you by soccer 90 dot. They're your source for FC Dallas, us national team gear and international club gear. Check out all the new national team gear that's just arrived for Copa America and Euro 2024. All the big guns they got all the good stuff. Argentina, France, Germany, Brazil. You name it, they got it. Third degree listener of course, you get 20% off the discount in store or online. Simply mention third degree at checkout or use that code thirddegreeCheckout on suckernoney.com. Get that discount. Some exclusions may apply. Third degree the podcast is also brought to you by the Lindstrom law firm. For Wills trust, probates and business law. Call 469-515-2559 that's 469-515-2559 or visit lindstromlawfirm.com for a free consultation. Well, go watch undefeated North Texas soccer club play with all the homegrowns in it. That's much more fun. [01:11:55] Speaker A: Okay, maybe that is the that is the alternative for everybody. All right. [01:12:00] Speaker B: Cheap ticket, too. [01:12:02] Speaker A: Very good. All right, well, thank you, boys, and thank you, FC Dallas. Curious fan. Let's all stick together. We will be back for another episode next week of third degree, the podcast. [01:12:15] Speaker B: Dude, where's my soccer team? [01:12:18] Speaker A: Third degree, the third degree nepot. Third degree the third degree nepochet. Third degree the third degree nap, I guess. Third degree the third degree nap, I guess.