3rd Degree the Podcast #292

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Third Degree, the Third Degree Nep Podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree Nap Podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree Nap Podcast. Third Degree, the Third Degree Nerd Podcast. Well, hello there and Happy New Year FC Dallas. Curious fan, welcome to a new episode. This one's 292 and the first of 2025 of third degree the podcast. Dan is not with us. He is still off and hopefully will rejoin us soon. But that means for the first episode of 25, we've got a very special guest. Please join me in a warm welcome of a third degree alumnus, himself, and a guy who really knows his numbers. Arman Karfai here onto the show. Hello, Arman. Did I pronounce your last name correctly? [00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, Kaphai. You got it right. I mean, sweet. You got it right. [00:01:07] Speaker A: If there was a video component, you'd see me fist pumping that I pronounced a foreign last name correctly for the first time on the first try. It's good to see you again, my friend. [00:01:16] Speaker B: It's good to be back, guys. I mean, how long has it been? Seven, Six? I mean, we all still talk, but, like, been like, as a part of, like, some sort of third degree thing. [00:01:26] Speaker A: I think the last time I saw and talked to you in this kind of capacity, you were still in high school, you were unmarried, and you didn't have three children yet, and now you have all those things in your life. [00:01:38] Speaker B: Maybe I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm not sure about the three kids part. The marriage is a bit of a long shot. I don't know if I still graduated high school, so, you know, we're still kind of in that. But it's good. It's good to be back, guys. It's good to be back. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Well, we needed your help for this. And before we get to that, let me introduce everybody to my hero. Your hero, Everybody's hero. Editor, founder of thirddegree.net and the original soccer influencer himself, Buzz Carrick. Come in, Buzz. Happy New Year, my friend. [00:02:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Happy New Year to you and Armand. I was gonna say it's about six or seven years since you bailed on us to go to work for the man and sold us out. So. I don't know. It's been a while. [00:02:17] Speaker B: It's been a long time. [00:02:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:18] Speaker B: I mean, yeah. I don't know. I don't know if selling out's the right word because in the end, it wasn't that much, you know, difference. [00:02:25] Speaker C: The money wasn't there. [00:02:26] Speaker B: How much difference? But, you know, it was. I Still, you know, it was, it was still. It was a great time. It was a great. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Hey, zero to minimum wage is still a pay increase. Arman, what are you doing these days? You're doing what, you're working for a bank? [00:02:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm working for a bank right now, so, you know, doing that good old stuff and doing freelance MLS stuff on the side as well, you know, with stuff with back healed, some podcast, the hacks, etc. So yeah, it's still keeping involved the game and you know, after leaving the club side, it's been a lot different, I'll tell you that. [00:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So we should probably tell everybody. There was a run of time where you were one of the data nerds for FC Dallas. [00:03:09] Speaker B: The only data nerd you were. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Oh, sorry. [00:03:12] Speaker B: There was no other data. There was no data nerd in there. It was just me. And even then I was half a data nerd because I still have my other. I still had my job. Right. So. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:22] Speaker B: It was, it was different. I'd always see you guys and you guys are, hey, what's up? What's up? What's up? And I'd be like, oh, I have to go run into this. Like I. Buzz, you saw. I'm have to go run into a room and like record a camera for a little bit, you know. [00:03:32] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [00:03:34] Speaker A: Well, Armand, we brought you on specifically for. Well one, I wanted to see you again. And two, Dan wasn't here and three, we got a lot to talk about that involves numbers and specifically roster and salary rules because so much has happened, Buzz, since the last time we recorded an episode. Were you out of town or something? [00:03:55] Speaker C: Well, we had holidays. I went to Italy for a bit and then we. So the team of course made a bunch of move and then we had holidays and then I didn't leave town, but I was unplugged with family and that might as well have been. That was the joke is that I wasn't even out of town and they made all these trades. [00:04:09] Speaker B: So. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Well, we got a list of stuff to talk about and it took me a few minutes to kind of sort out what order we should do this in. But we will start with what I think everybody tuning into the pod is most interested in hearing about is all of the rumors now as the time of this recording. I'm correct in saying, Buzz, none of this related to Seattle is official, correct? [00:04:29] Speaker C: Well, nothing is official in the sense that it's been announced. The people that have reported the details, of course, are very good. And there's no doubt that what they've said is true. The day that the. That Bogart put it was the first one, I believe, to put out all the technical details of this hypothetical trade. I confirmed with sources on my end that as of that moment, Jesus had not actually signed anything. So. Okay, you know, while, you know, people are talking about this is all on the table and Jesus has agreed to this or that. He may have agreed in principle, and I don't doubt that, but nothing is signed. And my assumption at the time is that they're waiting for the window to actually hit and see if, like, they get some calls at the last minute. He. They being Jesus and his people. Okay. You know, to see if something's out there other than this, because. Stop, stop, stop. [00:05:16] Speaker A: Hold on one sec. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Let's. [00:05:17] Speaker A: Let's set the table for everybody because it's been a bit since, I believe the last time we did an episode, there was a rumor out there that Paul and Jesus both were up for being traded to Seattle, but we were all very much in the dark on that. But since we recorded last, the rumor from Bogart and others is that there is a deal on the table for Jesus Ferreira. Well, let's get the Paul thing out of the way. The Paul thing appears to be in limbo or still very much up in the air. [00:05:45] Speaker C: Correct. The two moves are completely independent, so they, you know, each could still happen on its own merits. So the Paul one, we have not heard anything in a bit, but it is still just as viable as the Jesus one, really, I think. [00:05:56] Speaker A: All right, so the Jesus one is that Jesus would go to Seattle, which. Which means he's probably going to end up having to redo his deal. And we'll get into that part. But Dallas in return would get at least as far as Buzz is concerned, pending what he said in a previous episode, Less than ideal numbers. $2 million in GAM, some dude named Leo Chu, and an international spot. And that was what Dallas would get in return, along with getting Jesus and his attitude and his $2.2 million salary off their books. And that is what we're waiting to around to find out is whether or not it's a real deal or not. [00:06:36] Speaker C: Yeah. The key is, of course, that FC Dallas is not a great team right now. And so they need to be able to open up powerful slots with powerful chunks of money in order to do things. And while Jesus is a great player, you know, at the point the stuff they have isn't working right. They need to do something. And so this is the one of the ways you do it. Because if you trade or sell Jesus, you can get in large chunks of Gamma, which Armand will get to in a minute. You open up a DP spot so then you can do things with Paul Ariela. If you end up keeping him, you give yourself a chance to go out and get various players of various stature, because that's one of the biggest, most powerful mechanics in the league, you know. And it's about time for Jesus to have a fresh start, really. So the bottom line is that this thing is, you know, we appears to be moving forward. Of course, Jesus still wants to go to Europe. So, you know, there are questions about why he would want to take this deal. And the bottom line is that, like, he's been here since he was nine years old, right? And sometimes people just need a fresh change of scenery. And we've seen this a lot with the State House and particularly homegrowns. You see them come up and be pros for four or five years, and then they kind of like, you know what? I want to do something different. I've been here since I was a kid. You know, we saw it with Kellen Acosta, we saw it with Reggie. Really, you saw it with. You can name any homegrown. Some of them feel more strongly about it than others. But at some point, these guys all look for greener sceneries. The only guy that's not been that way publicly is Paxton Pamichol, who's been all in on Dallas all the time, although even he harbors interest in Europe. Eventually, but that's a whole different discussion. [00:08:03] Speaker A: I want to get into somewhat of the emotions and the larger meaning of this transaction, assuming it goes through a little bit later on. Amarn, what I really would love to hear from you is a little bit about the. The money detail and how this GAM thing works and, and how this benefits Dallas, how it will affect Jesus financially and what those definitions are. And I hope maybe you can fill in some of those. Those holes. [00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, look, right now, Seattle is in the spot where they do not want to make Jesus a designated player. That's the way that they want the structure still. And I think that's the only way this deal is going to go through. Therefore, Jesus will have to take a deal that will push him into the TAM threshold. The TAM threshold would mean that his salary would need to be around 1.7 ish, 1.8 ish, somewhere in that range. Lower, even lower maybe for him to be in that TAM range so he could be bought down using target allocation money, AKA tam. And he doesn't account as a designated player, so it's a bit complicated on that regard. He has to accept a new deal, take a pay cut to go to Seattle for Dallas. This would open up a designated player spot, which they're all equal to the same, but gives them flexibility to say, hey, we're going to change up the roster construction if they want to. Remember, mls, there's two different ways you can construct a roster. You can either get three designated players and three U22 spots, or you can get two designated players and four U22 spots. And those spots are important because you can spend a lot of transfer fees on those. And actually they only hit out the budget for nothing. I'll give you an example. Musa, right, Musa. Musa was bought for a really big fee. His salary according to MLSPA is 2.2 million. He hits at the FC Dallas budget charge or the salary cap at $743,000 because of the designated player that he is, net status. So those spots are important, Peter. And what that does is this would open up a spot for FC Dallas to either say, hey, we want to add a third, third DP and you know, orchestrate something in that capacity. I saw rumors about a player on Twitter. Or it allows them to say, hey, we want Champa roster build. We'll build around Musa and Allen and then we'll add a Couple of other U22 players as well that we think can develop and grow. So all in all, this just gives Dallas a lot more flexibility to operate within the means of the roster construction rules in mls. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Buzz, if you take everybody into consideration, all the players, Dallas, Seattle, Jesus and Chu, who do you think's the big winner out of this deal? [00:10:44] Speaker C: Seattle. [00:10:46] Speaker A: Why? [00:10:47] Speaker C: Well, you know, Jesus right now is at his lowest moment really since he's become a big time player physically, you know, goal scoring emotionally, he's at rock bottom, basically. So they're getting a player on budget partially because Dallas is a team that has missed the playoffs and are desperate to do some things. And when teams are bad, they sometimes will panic and undersell a player rather than sticking with it and holding on to him, you know. And to give you a clear example, if Dallas were to just hold on to Jesus and see if there's a deal now, or maybe see there's a deal this summer if he starts playing better, anything you sell him for over 3 million, you pocket 3 million in dollars in GAM and then you also have all that extra money on top that you put into the organization like they did with Ricardo Pepe, that's better for FC Dallas than this deal with Seattle. Now all the parts that they put together and maybe we'll talk some more about these in a minute. All those parts add up to that $3 million ish in GAM value but they don't exceed it. And you know, if you had the ability to be patient if you. Dallas, if you, if you had the, the. The. The fan base that was loyal enough and had the revenue basis that were loyal enough, you could ride out Jesus a little bit. But they really don't have that luxury. He's really hurting their cap situation across the board as is Paul across the board. So they're kind of desperate to make this happen. Whereas Seattle's getting a player who is at a rock bottom price and but at one point was worth a price of 12 million depending on what country was offering that. It's like when Dallas got Alan Velasco on the cheap for like 9 million or whatever it was for Alan when a year before people were talking about 17 million for him and then Covid hit and his team was cash desperate and they were forced to do a deal below value. So that's the same scenario here. Dallas is going to be forced to do a deal slightly below value or maybe a lot below value of when he's an 18 goal scorer and the clean and a team and a guy in the argument for MVP and playing in the World Cup. Right. So because Dallas needs has to do something to get out of the bottom of the league, they're going to sell a player at discount and say I was going to get a player at discount that could be a huge player in the long run for them. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Armand, who do you think the winner in this is? Do you agree with Buzz or somebody else? [00:13:03] Speaker B: I 100% agree with Buzz because Seattle is just flush with allocation money like so the way that Sounder at heart has also reported this and Buzz, I don't know if you've heard anything of the structure of the GAM they're Dallas is only getting a million in GAM in 2025 and then the rest are spread out across the two years of 2026 and 2027. That's according to Sandra Hart, Jeremiah Ocean and. And those guys. My guess. Yeah, and my guess is you go 1,000,500. 500. And Seattle, they just sold off a bunch of international spots. They have so much allocation money I would not be surprised if they got allocation money for being in the club World Cup. I mean, I have no idea about any of that stuff, but I would not be surprised if they received anything. So for Seattle, this is nothing. I don't think this will be much for them in terms of actual investment. Leo Chu is a player that they've been wanting to, you know, get rid of and they have a sell on fee for him as well. So if there's a deal, according to Sound as a Heart, the details on there, and if Leo Chu is sold, they would retain some of that sell on fee as well. And Dallas is selling a player, I think at a very low value. And look, I get why Dallas is making this move. This, this move again is you need to turn the page. But to me, this is across the board, probably a culmination of the mismanagement of Jesus Ferreira as a whole versus the current situation right now. Because I think right now it's, it's. The value just isn't there. Especially when you look at the gam and how it's spread up across the years. [00:14:33] Speaker A: I want to. Real quick, I want to touch on what you just said about mismanagement of Jesus. How much of this buzz is on Jesus? I mean, I mean, I think if we're all being honest, the reason why we're in the spot, the reason why they are in the spot they are in, they being the club in Jesus, is because Jesus has been really poor for a season and a half and hasn't done very much. Seattle doesn't know what player they're getting and they're still paying him a tremendous amount of money to come up there and play. Would you agree that they mismanaged Jesus? [00:15:06] Speaker C: Well, what they mismanaged was the capitalization on the value. You know, the. It's not their fault that the Russia 12 million thing got rejected. That was MLS officially, unofficially, we don't know, but officially it was MLS. There was a deal on the table last summer to Las Palmas, which is in Spain. We don't know the value of that number, but that deal got died at the last second. And my sort of vibe I got was that some. The club basically said no and or pull did something and they made it fall apart at the last second. And to me, that was a bit of a little bit of a panic situation where they know that Jesus wanted to leave for a couple years and they had this deal lined up. But you know, remember last year at that point, effectively they were on record for worst record in club history and they're floundering and they're panicking. And I'm sure that someone, probably likely the coach was like, you cannot sell Jesus in the middle of this season. I'm already cooked. So they didn't sell him. And I'm sure that. And as his value has declined as his. You remember also a year ago in the winter, there was this talk of this issue. He was having this hernia or whatever it was, and they were like, oh, we're going to fix it. Not going to have surgery. We're going to try and work through it and rehab through it. That obviously didn't work. So there was a miscalculation and a misplay or a misdiagnosis or a miss. No, I don't know what the word would be, the miss prescription of how they should fix it. And he was troubled with it all year and never got better. I'm sure Seattle looks at a player that's like fresh scenery, fresh coaching, surrounded by great players. We'll get him with our medical staff and he'll get healthy. They're probably banking on a guy who's at his bottom value but yet is capable of being an 18 goal scorer in this league. And honestly, if Jesus had been 15 and 15 last year, we wouldn't have had a coaching change here. They would have been well up into the playoffs, even with Moussa performance, if he'd have done that too, they would have far outscored their goals against and they would have been. We would not be having this conversation at all. So not. It's not just on the club's mismanagement, but they have mismanaged him for sure as part of this. [00:16:57] Speaker A: But how much value? And I mean, there's so many different layers to this deal for all parties involved. It's really, really hard to kind of like pick this thing apart and do it justice. But the one part of this that I keep thinking about is the idea that I think we can all agree that Jesus Ferrer represents kind of the crown jewel of this academy. I know Pepe is its own thing, but for me, Jesus coming in and becoming the guy that they gave a ton of money to to stay here and be the man. I don't think this is the ending any of us ever imagined would be when Jesus left the club. And so I think that is an indicator of how badly the two parties wanted to get away from each other to the point where Dallas is left with really only one option. And I think the part that this is really scary to me and I keep referring to, I call it the, the MLS version of saquon Barkley effect, which is, you know, what if Seattle's about to get a kid who's, you know, 24 years old. Since we last talked, we were, I think this, since we last talked, we found out is going to be a father and now is getting ready to turn around and try to go resurrect his career at a direct inconference. Nemesis Dallas must have really needed to get him off the books to have pulled the trigger on this particular deal. [00:18:20] Speaker C: Yeah, you're looking at a guy who coming out of the World cup and at the end of this season following that was worth I thought, you know, 10, 12 million which is where the offer eventually came in for him two years later and they're, they're just scraping the bottom of the barrel in order to try and get 3 million for the guy and they've painted themselves into a corner. FC Dallas has, they're stuck. They need to try and do some things to improve this team or else you're just gambling that he's going to come good and he doesn't want to be here. You know, he wants out as badly as they want him to, to be out. And I think you're, you're right in terms of him being the cream of the players that they've kept. Obviously when you get into the discussions of Chris Richards and, and Pepys and, and Wesley McKinney's then you have other conversations but in terms of like capitalizing on this is our guy and he actually had us what I thought was a relatively value contract for what he was doing when they got him re upped, you know, he was on the middle of that big time run or going into that big time run, you know. And so it's only now when he's had a season and a half of straight downhill to the bottom where he's barely worth, not even going to be able to pull 3 million for him, you know that you, you think this whole thing has gone horribly south and is not, it's so far south in fact that he's talking or considering taking a million dollar pay cut in order to leave, you know, and he just found out he's having a kid. So like that should tell you how sour the whole thing is and how desperate FC Dallas is to move on at this point. [00:19:39] Speaker B: And Buzz. Yeah, like you, like you were saying, I think the more I guess damning thing is he's like, yeah, just get me out of here for lack of a better word because he's taken a pay cut in a significant one at least probably what, 500, $600,000, give or take, which is. I mean, that's a pretty significant pay cut to leave the club. And I mean, I think whenever we were watching him growing up through the academy, you know, the 2017 Dallas cup team, etcetera, I don't think any of us envisioned this ending with him going to the Seattle Sounders, who. Who have consistently, year after year in the playoffs, cooked FC Dallas in a way. And now he's going to a stage to where. And I think the big winner out of this, to be honest with you, is Jesus Ferreira, if we're going to be honest, he gets a. He gets to go to a spot with a club that, like, that is, you know, proven. And know you have Brian Schmetzer, who's a fantastic coach, and you get a scene and you get a moment to show off yourself in the club World cup against top opponents like Atletico Madrid and psg like that. How is that not a way to, I guess, quote, unquote, revitalize your career? Like, revitalize your career? [00:20:45] Speaker A: I understand where you're coming from and I also understand Buzz's point about Seattle being the big winner in this, but I. There's a part of me that feels like Dallas might be the winner in this. Now, all of this is predicated on the idea that Jesus doesn't, you know, Saquon Barkley them to death in a 97th minute of a must have game. Okay. [00:21:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:21:08] Speaker A: But if Jesus doesn't return to Jesus form, Dallas got him off the books. And I. And there's just a sense to me that that is a guy in a. In a personality and a thing that had to happen, so the emotional component of it needed to happen. Check. You got that money off your books. Check. You've got a DP slot that you need to use for something else other than Jesus accomplice. Check. I think you. I think you can make an argument that Seattle's the winner. You can make an argument that Jesus is the winner, but I don't think you can discount that depending on how this plays out, the Dallas could end up being winner of this. But I do think we really won't know who the winner of this trade is until at the earliest, the end of the 25 season. [00:21:56] Speaker C: Yeah. If Jesus doesn't rebound, then you would be right. Then Dallas will get a win out of this. But look, I also want to circle back and remind everybody that when I tweeted on the 31st that the deal wasn't that Jesus hadn't signed it. That was around 5 or 6 o'clock on the 31st. That's New Year's Eve. So it didn't happen after that. Didn't happen on the first. So maybe something happened today. But the windows in Europe all just opened. So I bet you that this thing won't go down for at least another week, if not all the way to the end of the European window. I think that Jesus will want to wait until the last second of the European windows being open, which is relatively short this time because it's their middle window. You know that, right? So I think Jesus will wait as long as he can before he puts pen to paper to make this happen. [00:22:37] Speaker A: So that does lead me to this question. If a club in Spain, let's say Las Palmas, comes back and says, all right, we'll give you four, $4 million for Jesus, is that a better deal? I'm not talking about Jesus. Is that a better deal for Dallas? [00:22:54] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because then you get the full 3 million in GAM right now and you get a million dollars to put into your club some other way, whatever you want to do. The whole 4 million in real money, you get $3 million in fake money instantly. So. [00:23:09] Speaker B: Nope, exactly. Buzz, buzz at the Hammer on the head look. So teams can turn up to 3 mil, like up to 3 million other transfer revenue into that. Into that gam and. Exactly. If they sold Jesus for that, like that amount, maybe 4 million or whatever, they could convert a lot of that into gam, maybe even more than how much they would get. They can also spread it. I think they can also spread that across the years. I don't think it also come in at once compared to the value that they're getting right now, which again is 1 million in 2020. The one number that we know is a apparently it's 1 million in 2025 and spread out across the years. So for Dallas, I think it and MLS incentivizes you to sell players and do this because it'll give you more money to re put back into your squad. It would be a better deal if they were to could figure out a way to sell them to Europe. But I mean, with the current offer that they have, it would kind of be okay. You get some roster flexibility and then you also get a piece that I guess you could work with in Leo Chu. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Okay, so that's what I want to know. Because the Leo Chew and international spot was the two bonus additions when the rumor from Bogart came out that none of us had Thought about. So Armand or Buzz, I don't care who, which, what is, what is the value of this deal with the player in Chu and the value of the international spot as it, as it pertains to Dallas. [00:24:30] Speaker B: So for the international spot, I would probably say it's around 150 to $175,000 in allocation money. That's like, it's not that it's pretty small for Leo Chu. Look, so he's a you, he's right now U22 player on the Seattle books. But he doesn't have to be because MLS U22s and designated players, their deals are amortized across. So like If I paid 3 million for a player on a three year guaranteed deal, it would be his salary plus 1 million. His salary plus 1 million. That's the budget charge. But according to MLS's budget charge, it would only be 200,000 because he'd be designated as a U22 player. I don't know if I lost you there, Peter, but. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Well, I mean, yeah, that, that this is quickly beginning to give me tired head but yes, I, I, I get. [00:25:19] Speaker B: But here's a, here's a kicker Leo Chu is not a guaranteed part of his portion guaranteed portion of his contract. He's actually on an option part of the deal. So that amortized thing goes away. So essentially based on his MLSPA salary of like 550,000 last year, you could theoretically just slot Leo Chu into like a. I'm, I'm pretty sure you could slot Leo Chu into a senior roster spot or if he's making above the whatever threshold you could bring him down and not use a U22 spot for him. So with that you could actually take those transfer funds and put those back in into your squad with. Without having the Restrictions of the U22 sales that exist in the roster rules. [00:25:59] Speaker A: All right, but Buzz, in terms of Eric Quill and how he's going to play this team, if I go look up, when I went up and looked up choose numbers for 24, they were pretty crummy. He had a really good 23, but he had a very Jesus Ferrero like 24. And which I find kind of funny. I mean his collect, I'm just, I'm going to blow Armand away with this actual stat that I looked up in the 15 games he played in in 2024. His total XG for all of those games added up cumulative is 0.08. His total cumulative assisted XG is 1.1 over the course of 16 games. That's pretty crap for a guy coming off the wing. [00:26:50] Speaker C: Yeah. In. In 2024, his numbers compare favorably. They're in the same ballpark as Bernie Camingo and Paul Areola when you look at them as per 90, so not great. But if you look at his 2023 numbers, they're phenomenal. He's way better than both. So obviously, some coaching needs to come into play here. I can't speak for what all happened in Seattle. There's lots of talk about the kind of players that are behind him, and he doesn't do a lot of defensive work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if you watch the tape of him in 2023 on what he looks like, he looks like this vertical kind of wing player who wants to get forward and go at people. That is a kind of hallmark of the kind of players that Eric Quill uses. Right pace, power, athleticism, but also some skill. You know, he. He's. When you watch him play, he's going to look vaguely like Bernie Camingo, to be fair. Same sort of player. So a player that I think fits the paradigm here. What kind of player are you going to get? Are you going to get the 23 or the 24? Who's to say? At the other hand, he's on an option. So, like, this could be a simple. Like, give us a guy that's going to be out of contract at the end of the season that we can have him on cheap this year. You know, whether it's cheap on the U22 or whether it's cheap because he's on his option, whatever, we can dump him. You know what I mean? So, like, if all you're trying to do is get out of Jesus's cap, then this is a guy that you can dump and be out of cap real fast, right? Maybe he comes good. Maybe he works out for you. Just like they're getting a guy who's down and out, Jesus Dallas is getting back a guy who's a bit down and out in chew. So we'll see what happens. [00:28:20] Speaker A: So, Buzz, I think people come and listen to this podcast because they want to hear your opinion and your opinion specifically. Now that you've had a few days to think and ponder on this, if this deal goes down as we understand it, as discussed here, what is your opinion about that? [00:28:38] Speaker C: I think that they're getting less value for Jesus than they should. I think they're selling at rock bottom rather than anything else, but rock bottom. Like I said last time we did a podcast, Peter I said Dallas needs to have the cojones to not sell Jesus under value. Sit on him for half a season. You know, coach, get. Go to your coach. You've got to get this guy producing because we need more value than this. You gotta be. You can't be afraid to go into the season. Like how many times have they said they wanted, they would like to be Seattle where they make the business and change and get hot at the end, right? They say that all the time. Oh, we're gonna sit on the transaction and see if we can use it in the summer. It never has worked for them like it works for Seattle. So I would have still liked them to see that because you're selling a guy at rock bottom, you know. But I think it just goes again to cycle back. It goes back to tell you that a. How they're panic moves are never great. And this is a little bit of a panic move on their part. And Jesus is absolutely desperate to go. So, you know, their hands may be tied. I, I think that you could have gone to Jesus and say, we're going to do our very best for the summer, but you've got to bring it for five months to get this value up so we can sell you for more than 200k over the next three years. So I'm not thrilled with it. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Okay. That's what I think the people want. Let's move to Paul real quick. We obviously have mentioned that that deal has not happened. I do think one of the weird ironies of this is the last time we talked, we were all convinced if anything was going to get announced first it was the Paul deal, not the Jesus deal. [00:30:10] Speaker C: Yep. [00:30:11] Speaker A: So do you have any insight as to why that hasn't happened yet? [00:30:15] Speaker C: No, I do not. Other than they with the window coming, people may have been more interested in getting the Jesus thing done. I wouldn't put it past Seattle have to put a deadline on the Jesus deal where they can feel like they can sit on Paul and see what their money looks like as they get closer to the season for Dallas. We all love Paul aerial as a person, as a captain, as a solid contributing MLS player. Having Paul Ariel on your team is not a bad deal. It's just the contract. So at this point, because he's, you know, approaching 30, anything you can get for Paul is all about a salary dump. And if you get a player back, if you get an international spot back, whatever you can get back, you get back. Because he's not a DP like Jesus who could be a game changing 20 goal player. Paul is approaching the end of his career and as a leader, which has got value, versatility which has got value, but you at this point you just do. It's all about getting that number off the contract because it either gives a DP spot open or it saves you a million dollars in GAM on top of saving you like a full DP spot spot slot in terms of just pure salary. So Paul, you would actually literally do anything to take off your books. You know, because of that, if you actually want to try and get better, he's even more important than Jesus is. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Frankly Armand, it actually the scenario in which we're talking about Paul in Seattle seems like a pretty sweet deal for Paul. And everybody's alarmed that he may be asked to take like a 50% pay cut. But he will get, if this deal goes through, he'll get all of his money for 2025 because he'll get the buy whatever Seattle doesn't pay him. Dallas will just buy out the the. But he also gets a longer term deal with Seattle because he'll sign a new contract for more years. Am I reading that correctly? [00:31:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's correct. Again, like all these Seattle deals are pretty funny how they work because they're just wanting Jesus and Paul at levels that they're not at right now. So again they want Ariola closer to that Tam, that TAM line which is close to that borderline TAM, which is around that $744,000. But he would get all of what he's getting in 2025. Just Dallas would pay that portion, buy out that portion from their budget charge and then Seattle would pay a smaller portion relative to that. [00:32:27] Speaker C: Yeah, to be clear, if you do the Paul deal, you're basically preventing you from doing a contract buyout on a Paxton or a Legette or on anybody else. Yeah, you know, we, we're, we're here, we hear positive vibes about Paxton. That's not the same as actually seeing improve it. But I think the club would be happy to have Paxton on his number at some level of contribution. Sebastian Legette back into last year, honestly best player on the team over the last three months of the season. Okay, we'd like to move that side but if we can't, not the end of the world. It's only a couple hundred thousand dollars buy down. You know, if you, if you, if you can use your buyout to on Paul to make this deal happen, then you do it because you don't have any other albatross contracts other than his and that's what that thing is for. That's coming money right out of the hunt's pocket. And you take care of this contract. Paul gets his money, he gets to go back to the west coast. You know, it's a win win for everybody. And if you get a bag of balls back, you get a pick back, you get some supplemental roster Ex homegrown is not working out. Whatever it is, doesn't matter. Get, you know, whatever it takes to get it done, you do it. [00:33:28] Speaker B: And buzz like, like you said it. I think you're 100% right. It is more important for the cap to be to have this par Ogola deal done than the Jesus Ferrer deal done. Because there's in just the pure numbers the. But the budget charge for Paul is around 1.7 million. Like that's significant. And again for Jesus we're looking at a number that was closer to 700, like 44,000 because he's the designated player. So I know it opened up a key prime roster spawn that allows them to allocate things. But in terms of pure opening up space buzz, you're 100% right. The open trading areola and clearing up a space opens up significantly more. [00:34:08] Speaker A: Armand, and I mean this lovingly, you are the. You're here because you're an egghead and I love you for it. What when you just look at this from the numbers and the data standpoint, how do you feel like this works for Dallas? Do you feel that like do you think this works? This is a good resolution for them both in terms of the Jesus and the Paul deal. [00:34:32] Speaker B: In terms of the Jesus deal, again, like I'm kind of on the side of Buzz. I'm not exactly sold because Leo Chu has been declined has had some numbers especially again, you're getting on a low but. And Jesus has had sparks and we've seen those sparks that Jesus has had in 2023 and 2024. His. I mean if you look at his expected gold numbers and expect assists some of his other metrics as well, they're fine. It's nothing great. It's nothing crazy. They're fine. It may maybe a little inflated. Okay. Yeah, sure. For Areola it's. I think that's again the solution like that solution is a bit better for the club because it clears up that space and are you all. Look they're. They're wanting to put him at wing back at some moments it wasn't sure he's a great leader in the locker room for understand his numbers have declined drastically since what we. What we've seen 22. [00:35:21] Speaker C: Yeah, since 20 got dropped from the World Cup. [00:35:23] Speaker B: Exactly. And it's kind of, it's fallen off and I'm assuming the move to wing back didn't really help when he played wing back in those moments either. And I think for them to, to get off his contract, give him a fresh start somewhere else else. I think the areola deal, I mean regardless how it gets done and even if they get like a first round pick, even if they get like 50k in allocation money or something, whatever it is, I, I wouldn't expect much to come in the, in Dallas's return outside of just being a pure like salary like dump for them to clear up that space. I think the areola deal is way better in terms of need and other things and how Paul's actually been playing than the Jesus deal. [00:36:04] Speaker C: These two moves are so obvious that the very first thing I wrote back on October 30 was an article that said sell Jesus for anything more than 3 million and get Paul's contract off the books. Those are the two things you have to do in order to make this team be any better for next season. [00:36:18] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:18] Speaker C: And that's the number one focus of the offseason, has to be those two things. [00:36:21] Speaker A: Armand. The irony is my head is actually egg shaped. [00:36:25] Speaker C: So it is at that. [00:36:28] Speaker A: It is, yeah. [00:36:30] Speaker B: It's not that bad. [00:36:32] Speaker A: The other part of this is it is interesting that all of this is happening because I feel like it wasn't that long ago, Buzz, we were all just kind of sitting around poking a stick into the sand saying, hey, Sonata, Dallas D Dan Hunt, do something. And they're doing a lot. This has been one of the most active off seasons in this club's history. [00:36:55] Speaker C: Yeah, they've pulled the trigger on multiple deals. They're actually trying to be proactive about getting this team better. They're trying to get it back on track of the FC Dallas way with the academies and the homegrowns and the development. It's not always the homegirl. Sometimes it's the U22 guys. As Mon said, it won't shock me to see them go. 2 DPS, 4 U2. 22 initiative players. That's the Dallas way. You know, it's. They're. They're going after center backs. Now they may not be going after the guys that I might go after, but they're going after guys. You know, they're, they're bringing in pieces that some of these trades are better than others, but they're the pieces they're bringing in are even lined up exactly with the kind of coach they have. You know, a coach that fits this club and fits this system better. So, you know, in a general vibe, they're doing what we said they needed to do. So execution, of course, and payoff are going to be the key. How we, how we grade them. [00:37:45] Speaker A: Okay, that's a little over 30 minutes of Jesus Ferrer to Seattle talk. So I think that is well done there. As you said, there's been lots of action. And before I get into the deals that we know that have happened, amazingly out of the blue the other day came this somewhat the. I'm not, I don't know how much value we want to put into this, but the noise that the Moose has interest from two clubs in the Premier League which could net Dallas a whole bunch of money, versus the idea of now suddenly losing Musa for the 25 season. [00:38:22] Speaker C: Yeah, this one's interesting. You know, I can't begin to tell you how real these stories are from across the pond, but teams have been named and Dallas has been named as saying they have an £18 million price as a starting price of discussions. If obviously two teams are coming in, that'll raise the price. Theoretically, that's, that's roughly 22 million U.S. depending on how, what the exchange rate is at the moment, like it changes from week to week. But this is how selling leagues work, right? You bring in a player if you double your money within a year and that's perfectly understandable to sell this guy at that price. There would be no complaint from me. If you can sell him for over $20 million US obviously that changes you from a mid rebuild, which is what I would call what they're doing, to a complete rebuild. If you sell that guy because then you're starting over across the board. When you also get rid of Jesus and you also get rid of Paul Aola. Now you're talking about a lot of things you got to do because you know, we, we and I'm sure the club are counting on Pusa to be a big huge part of what they're doing on the front setup of this team next year. And you assumed you were going to be good for goals because you had that guy. So we have no domestic, I don't have any domestic sources that can confirm this, but you know, this is the kind of winter silly season news. These are the kinds of club guys that a club in England will go drop 20 million on without blinking like to a lot of these clubs. That's not A big deal. You know, they'll go sign that, a backup on that kind of money. And the two teams that were listed, by the way, for those curious, were Nottingham Forest and Leicester City. And you can, if you know those two clubs, you can know why. Maybe they were interested in a striker. So Vardy being 30,000 years old and not in Forest looking for goals, even though they're in the top of the league. So we'll see. I'm not super believing in this one, but, man, if somebody comes in with 20 something million, 22 million, I won't blame the Hunts for selling. [00:40:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Forest may be in because they may end up having to sell somebody in their frontline in. They may need a backup. [00:40:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:19] Speaker A: Armand, you're the. I'm interested in your thought about the idea of how, like, what does that number got to be for Dallas? That's the line in the sand to say, okay, we'll sell him. [00:40:30] Speaker B: I mean, Moussa was such an important part of the team's, like, I guess, turnaround in the second part of the year. But one thing that was super interesting about Musa is he actually like, overperformed his, like, expected goals by like six goals. Like, it was a ridiculous run. I think I even like, threw out a tweet about it where, like, his goal, like, conversion rate confirmed, his expected numbers were like, insanely, insanely high. They actually were a lot more closer to what his expected gold numbers are, closer to what he was doing at Boa Vista than any of the two Benfica years. And look, I think that number for Dallas, if they, again, like, if you can get around that 20, 22 in that range, you recoup how much you bought him for, which was what, around 12, 13 million, give or take. Then you, you, you get, you get that. And then you also can allocate some of that money to be used to continue roster building. But at that point, Peter, you have so much money in allocation money from the Jesus deal, from opening up Paul's space, from potentially this, that I don't know what you could do with it. I mean, Dallas, I'm looking at us. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Right now, could have a really good center back maybe, I guess, but they. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Would have a surplus of $7 million in allocation money. If those things go. That's insane for the players that they have. I was looking at this and running through some scenarios for you guys, and I was like, I don't even know what, what they could use with all this money. You could buy a DP and do all that stuff and it'd be so much so for me I don't think they need to do this deal. But if the offer comes and it makes sense, you kind of have to know. [00:41:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Something you brought up that I want to make sure people understand what that means and maybe help me reset my, my understanding of it. When you talk about him x outperforming his xg, the, the, the implication of that is, is that there's a chance he may regress backwards next season because he's overperforming. [00:42:17] Speaker B: That's correct. That's correct. And the thing that's interesting about Musa though is a lot of those shots that had the lower expected goals, they're expected goals. So there's two models, right. There's one when you actually kick it and then or when before you kick it and there's one when you actually kick it towards the mouth of the goal. And for Musa, he actually would like for example if an expected goal was.06 when it was actually kicked on frame it was closer like 0.3 or something like that. So he actually improved those shots. But yes, to your point, we know that expected goals are predictive and we know that they're predictive of future goals. So yes, there is a chance that Musa again it's kind of hard to tell because there's a coaching change, a philosophy change, etc, etc and, and if you remember, Dallas wasn't great offensively at the beginning of the year and shifted the pendulum shifted complete other direction at the end of the year. But there is a chance that Musa could regress and go and not score as many goals as he did compared to what he did in 2024. [00:43:16] Speaker A: Armand. Armand Buzz and I as old guys used to call that. That's a striker who was on a heater that cools off. Yeah, that's like the non stats explanation of what we're talking. [00:43:27] Speaker C: The other answer is that when people exceed their XT it's because they're clinical finishers. But the, the bottom line with any deal like this is yes, it's a bummer. But remember that the hunts from the get go have an all about this team being at least self sustaining or neutral in revenue loss if not profitable on its own. And they've never really gotten it in the stands or the TV deals or the marketing or the jersey sales to be that the only way they've made it happen is by selling players for money. So you know, if they make a $10 million of a one year of a player, they are pulling the trigger because they want that Peppy, golden shower of coin raining from heaven. And so they can swim in the cash for just a bit and feel really good about themselves. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Well, let's not also forget this would be happening right upon the precipice of them losing more than 50% of their ticket revenue and game day revenue. So that seems like that would be a really, really good. A deal of good timing if that was to happen. [00:44:27] Speaker C: Carrying through a couple of seasons of down revenue, huh? [00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. All right. We also had more Argentina and Allen links again, which all seems pretty weird. Are we tired of this? Do we believe we're tired of it? [00:44:41] Speaker C: This one happened after he redid his deal. And somebody said to me on Twitter, why? Why would Dallas sell a guy that just redid their deal? Well, because a new deal like that makes the price go way up. So if Boca's calling you redo his deal and you go, price just doubled, right? So the most recent report, and there's always these all the time, the most recent one says that now Boca wants just, like, half of his pass. They would get the player and only, like, half of his pass, and Dallas keep the other half. So you can see why, like, okay, if you come in with a bunch of money and we make our money back and then we get half of his pass, expecting he's going to be great and go for crazy money, because Boca can sell for crazy money, blah, blah, blah, that's what the thinking would be on Dallas's end. I don't think it's any more likely than it was a month ago, you know, or a year ago. You know, I think when a guy ups for a new, he now is the longest contracted player at the club. Obviously, they're doubling down on him. He's going to be the guy going forward. So, you know, yes, there's a price for anything. Price for everyone. I think for Allen right now, it would be really high. I think you would have to get into, honestly, Patusa territory before for 100% of a pass. You know, if you want to go 10 million for half a pass and we're looking at complete rebuild and we're selling Musa too. I mean, at that point, why not honestly burn it down? If you're going to get rid of Paul, Jesus, Musa and Allen, I mean, you might as well do it all at once, right? It's the Logan Farrington show at that point. [00:45:57] Speaker A: So could you imagine trying to compare your 2024 team photo to your 2025 team photo without those guys? It. [00:46:06] Speaker C: Well, you only got to sell 10,000 tickets each game this year, so. [00:46:09] Speaker B: Or how many drone shows? [00:46:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, lots. [00:46:13] Speaker A: Well, you know what? Since we last talked, the. I believe the company that does Dallas's drone shows is the company that had the big accident in, oh, Orlando that ended up having their drone show in downtown Dallas canceled for New Year's night. [00:46:28] Speaker C: Well, in the schedule release, they said there's gonna be more drone shows, so they'll be. I guess they'll get somebody else. [00:46:32] Speaker B: Hey, 17 drone shows for every home game. Who's against that? [00:46:36] Speaker A: Until they fall and land on some kid's head. Wait, wait, they've already had a letter fly off one of the stadium. [00:46:42] Speaker C: Yeah, Smash a guy. [00:46:44] Speaker B: Smash. [00:46:45] Speaker A: That's right. By the way, just go back and read the list on Buzz's website. You'll hear, you'll learn all about that. All right, so some things actually have happened. Everything that we've just spent the last almost 45 minutes discussing are all things that have yet to happen or may never happen. So let's quickly run through things that have actually happened. And this one completely blew my pants off. Shaq Moore is coming home. They traded him for Gam and he will likely be your starting right fullback next season. [00:47:17] Speaker C: Yeah, here's the deal. They didn't just trade him for Gam. They traded him for the same amount of GAM you trade a third round draft pick for, which is like that's lunch money. They. That's 100% pure salary dump by Nashville. That's what I. That's what they need to do with Paul effectively. FC Dallas does get 50k GAM back. I mean, that's nothing. That's. That is almost as the least amount you're capable of trading. That's half of a supplemental player. That's nothing. [00:47:44] Speaker A: Armand, how much is he making a year in salary? [00:47:46] Speaker B: So he's above like. So for this year, he's above the TAM threshold that. Well, according to MLSPA from last year at 881,000. But Nashville was really up against it. Like they had like, I think their allocation money room was like 200,000. Like they were bare. They had to make some moves to clear up space. And it seems like Dallas is like picking off players like that and that's how they get Shaq Moore for so cheap because they needed to clear up that space in order exactly like Buzz says, like what Dallas can do with Paul Oriola in order to clear up space to make more moves to bring in more players. [00:48:19] Speaker C: The Nashville beat writer, is it Bird, I think is his last name. He tweeted that they're also paying like 800k on top of that for his transfer fee buy down. They were so like that's not something that Dallas paid though. And they would. I believe that if I understand all correctly, they're getting him on just his base salary with some incentive for. With 100k if he does really well or whatever. But still that's nothing. That's. [00:48:38] Speaker B: It's basically free. I mean it's basically free to be honest with you. [00:48:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:48:42] Speaker A: I think the Nashville beat writer's name is Billy Ray. [00:48:45] Speaker C: But no, it's Billy Ray Cyrus. Yeah. [00:48:49] Speaker A: Do you like Shaq as a. As an option and as a player for Dallas? [00:48:55] Speaker C: Yes. The salary is a bit high. Well, the. The player is fine. Former academy player here. The player is perfectly fine. It's always about the number. [00:49:05] Speaker A: Okay. [00:49:05] Speaker C: So his number as a right back is basically almost a tan buy down number. So you're. But it's a right back. That's not a paradigm altering position. Those players don't need to be TAM players. They need to be Marco far fan. 400, 300. Right, right. Who's on the left? So it tells us to. However, two very, very important things. One, it confirms that Ruana is not coming back, which we already probably knew, but that's for sure now. It also again raises the specter of Giovanni and Jesus must be totally jacked and completely screwed because you would not do this. You would not trade for Shaq Moore if you thought Giovanni and Jesus was going to play this year or ever again for your team. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Do you mean his knee? Not him. You mean not like he's physically like bulk with muscles? [00:49:48] Speaker C: Yeah, there must be. It must be way worse than we thought or we heard it was because you just got a guy on big money, national team pool player. He's not first choice of course, but he's in the pool still. So man, that's. It's very telling for what it means beyond the fact that it's a solid player. Paid more than you probably would like. But yeah, a good player. [00:50:09] Speaker A: So Buzz, if I told you that you're starting back four is Shaq Moore Ibiaga to Farai and. Or put in Boubacar in there and Far fan. How would you feel about that? [00:50:23] Speaker C: That's a pretty solid athletic back four. I mean I don't hate that idea. That's much more aggressive. Like Shaq Moore is way more aggressive getting forward in a Brian Reynolds who played for Eric Will by the way or Reggie Cannon style. This is not A stay at home guy like Michael Farfan. So if you're wanting to have athletic outside backs, which Quill often does, this guy way more fits that paradigm than. Than some other guys might. [00:50:47] Speaker A: All right. All right. So the other one. I'm going to tell a quick story because I learned a lesson and I should have learned this lesson the first time I did it, which is you should be careful making fun of players personal attributes in public because your club will eventually sign them and make you feel stupid. And I learned this the first. I should have learned this the first time with Brian Dunseth. I don't know, Armon, you're probably too young to remember this, but when Brian Dunseth debuted for the revolution 100 million years ago. Buzz, do you remember this? [00:51:19] Speaker C: I do. [00:51:20] Speaker A: What did Brian Dunseth wear on the field when he was a rookie player? [00:51:24] Speaker C: Oh, I don't remember that. Was he the headband guy? [00:51:26] Speaker A: No, he was the loop earring guy. [00:51:30] Speaker C: Oh, yes. [00:51:31] Speaker A: He wore hoop earrings, which seems very dangerous and really weird. [00:51:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:37] Speaker A: And I made a lot of fun of him back in the day. And then of course, Dallas signed him many, many years later after he stopped wearing hoop earrings. So you would think I would have learned that lesson when somewhere deep in my Twitter thread, if you looked carefully enough, I'm sure you will find a tweet of me making a lot of fun of Anderson Julio for pulling his socks all the way halfway up his thighs. Because I'll be damned if Dallas hasn't traded for the Sox guy. [00:52:07] Speaker C: Well, here's my take. First, let me say that I love Sam Jungka. This guy was a phenomenal dude who. [00:52:15] Speaker A: They traded him for. [00:52:16] Speaker C: They traded for Anderson Julio. Phenomenal dude. Great in the locker room versatility, great price, great worker, covered immense ground, phenomenal player. I love this deal. I think Anderson Julio is phenomenal. This is the kind of power and pace and speed that just wrecks defenses if you can't run. And there's a certain amount of. Of running that has to happen in this game. This is not a league where you can. You can Barcelona ticky tack everybody to death. Nobody's that good at this level. Power and pace matter at this level. I love this guy. I think this is a phenomenal trade. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Even though he's not a starting type. [00:52:55] Speaker C: Player, I think he'll be a starter here. [00:52:57] Speaker A: Really? [00:52:57] Speaker C: I think the amount you gave up for him, Sam Jona is a really nice roster player, but only gets paid like what, like 250 or something that he was on 400k gam is like that's two international picks or that's like two first round draft picks. Maybe that's not a big deal for me to get a guy that I think is a game breaker like this that fits the coach. This is the kind of power this is. Basically think back to Eric Cool as a player. This is who that is. Pace, power, ability, right on the left side like Eric. So I love this move. I think it's a great move. [00:53:32] Speaker A: Where does he fit in Quill's system? [00:53:34] Speaker C: I think he's your starting left wing. I do. [00:53:38] Speaker A: So your front three is who? [00:53:40] Speaker C: Patter Musa on the at striker, Logan Farrington at right wing and Anderson Julio at left wing. Alan Velasco will play the point and a 4, 2, 3, 1. That's what I think. [00:53:52] Speaker A: Okay, now I'm in a worst case scenario. Jesus is traded, Musa is sold and just for shits and giggles, Velasco is sold. Who is your starting for now? [00:54:04] Speaker C: Well, legit would take over the point probably Julio would still be a starter at that point. Maybe Bernie depends on what Leo Chu looks like in camp. Know that's who you'd be looking at. Ferin would be the nine, almost certainly. Okay, you know we talked about that. If you sell Musa and if you sell for sure, if you sell Velasco, but if you sell Musa, you're in complete rebuild mode. That's down to the bones and going that's no. I think you could do better than Wooden Spoon, but you'd be going with completely new everything. And as it is right now, you're relying on the Musa Velasco. You know, some Logan Farrington performed really well. Legit performed pretty well. You think maybe you're getting your a Mindy back? Kathy Mana performed pretty well. You had some solid pieces, right? You had some base stuff happening. You just need to bring it up. You're moving out Jesus. You're going to have something to elevate. You're going to move out Ariel's contract. You brought in Shaq Moore trying to elevate the back, right? So these pieces are happening and try to elevate everything. Now if you end up having to sell Moose and Velasco, now you're back to the drawing board of needing all new DPs. That's a completely different scenario than it is of moving out. One huge cap hit and one DP and maybe changing up what you're doing slightly. That's. That's a mid rebuild what we're looking at right now. [00:55:15] Speaker A: All right. And I can Tell Armand is waiting for you to do this. Give letter grades to both those trades, please. [00:55:20] Speaker C: Buzz the shot more is a B deal only because of his number. That's a big number for A right back. I think that Anderson Julia trades an A. I love that trade. [00:55:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:55:30] Speaker C: And I say that with 100% belief that Sam Junk is a fantastic piece. But I like Anderson Julio a lot. Anderson Julio is the kind of player when I watch him play against Steph C. Dallas and this is probably what they did too. Like, holy crap, what a baller. Why can't we get that guy? You know, that's the kind of player this is to me. And I'm sure it's what happened when he scored from midfield against Martin Paz. [00:55:50] Speaker A: I'll only be happy with it if there's some line in his contract that they'll only give him medium sized socks. Armand, what do you think of those trades? You happy with those? [00:55:59] Speaker B: So Shaq Moore I think is A. Is definitely. I think it's like a floor raising move for sure. Like I think. [00:56:05] Speaker A: What do you mean by that? [00:56:06] Speaker B: Like I don't think it's a ceiling raising move, but I think Dallas's floor gets a lot higher with the addition of Shaq Moore. [00:56:13] Speaker C: Well said. [00:56:14] Speaker A: So smart. [00:56:15] Speaker B: I think he's a really good player. And it seems like Dallas has also got like a renegotiated deal with him as well for the later years. So maybe that cap hit goes down in later years, especially with the thresholds moving and all the BS and stuff going on. [00:56:27] Speaker C: So that'd be nice. [00:56:29] Speaker B: I think for me I like the Shaq more deal as a four raiser. I'd say a B is fair because they gave up nothing for him. I mean they give and they have so much allocation where they can do whatever. And his metrics are fine. They're nothing crazy. And for the price, like Buzz says, they're nothing. It's nothing amazing and special. But again, they have so much room that they can afford to do this stuff. The only question I have with the Julio move because again, they didn't give up much. They got 200k in gamma across 2 years. Sam Junk was an amazing salary for his production or amazing production for his salary. Excuse me. But with Anderson Julio the one thing is in the system. I know he's played a lot of second striker and striker. I think occasionally winger. I just wonder how. And I'm sure Eric Will has a plan for it. I wonder what's Eric Will's plan to implement him as a winger versus when he plays a second striker or a striker because I know rsl he often played one one of those two roles. But his advanced numbers are great. The only thing is again if you look at minutes wise, it's not that much volume in minutes. I mean play a thousand minutes in 2021, I think 527 in 2022, 1.1 in 2023 and 1.4 in 2024, which isn't like a consistent day in day out like starting numbers. The last time he played over I think 2000 minutes was in 2018 when he was 21 back in Ecuador. So that to me is that a little weird? [00:57:51] Speaker A: I mean Buzz isn't that. [00:57:52] Speaker B: That to me is a little concerning and that's why I would push his move to like a B. I mean from a pure advanced. If I look at his blind advanced metric green bars I would, I, I would be like overthink. The only thing is I'm a little concerned with some of those underlying things because but either it means that player has a lot more freshness in his legs or it means something else is up and I'm not sure what it is. [00:58:15] Speaker C: Well, don't forget that RSL went through this disastrous owner thing and coaching changes like twice and now Pablo's in there. So different coaches, so you guys different ways. The thing about both these deals I like is that the player metric, the player profile fits this coach, the new coach we have here. I like both of those things. And worst case scenario on Anderson Julio RSL picked up his option before they back in October. So he, they were willing to pay him what they they considered him worth that value. His contract isn't optional. They have one for 2026 here now in Dallas. Worst case scenario, if it's not working out, you just don't pick up the option, you move on. [00:58:49] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:58:49] Speaker C: And you'll give up Sam Jungkook for him, which is a great piece. But as Armand said, this is a guy that Houston had just let go and Dallas signed him for nothing basically when he first got here. So you know I the value on the Julio deal to me the money and the potential upside here are high. Whereas Shaq Moore, the money's not so great, you know. And as so smartly put it raises the floor of the defense in terms of the making your team less bad but maybe doesn't make it rate. And maybe the answer question also is part of the cell pater Musa of all of a sudden I need a nine. Maybe that's in the cards that maybe Logan Ferrington stays at wing. [00:59:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I like the Shaq Moore deal more than I do the Anderson Julio deal. Socks aside only because just my kind of old man analog observation is I feel like we're getting somebody else's bench player as an idea, as a starter and I. That to me doesn't feel like a good thing, a good move. But. [00:59:44] Speaker C: Well, when you're the 12th place team and you get that bench player from the third place team, maybe he is a starter. [00:59:50] Speaker A: Maybe. All right, fair enough. And Buzz, do you. Are you hearing any noise that you know, Zenana promised everybody there's another center back coming? [01:00:00] Speaker C: He did. He did nothing specifically other than the bizarre foot mob mishap today where they listed my shot. [01:00:07] Speaker A: Not. Not foot mob. That's a different website. [01:00:11] Speaker C: I don't know my mom, so I can't keep them straight. [01:00:13] Speaker B: I would call it foot mob too though. Like, is that like. [01:00:17] Speaker A: That's not the Rex. It's not the Rex Ryan bookmark. No, it's fought mob. [01:00:24] Speaker C: Either way, they posted on their transaction page today they posted Dallas hunting Maya Usada who is the LA Galaxy's captain and defender of the year. Granted he is 36, but he played 34 games in the league last year and 41 games in all comps and all those minutes and was their best defender. Stop me if you've heard this. An LA team wins an MLS cup with a veteran defender who now is a free agent and Dallas comes in and signs that old guy to be there. Center backs 1. Stop me if you've heard that story before. [01:01:01] Speaker A: Imagine an FC Dallas backline featuring LA Galaxy and LAFC burned out center backs from their MLS cup winning season. [01:01:10] Speaker C: I mean this dude has got a resume though. It is legit now. Yes, 36. Ordinarily I would hate that. Also, we have no idea if this is real. Maybe somebody was making a joke. Maybe somebody leaked something. Who knows? But it's a thing and it was out there. And I did say they were going to get one more center back and it's a story we've heard before of Dallas going and signing an LA center back coming off of MLS cup win. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Wait, isn't. Was it Omar 36? Omar Gonzalez. [01:01:38] Speaker C: Oh, Omar's 35. Yeah. [01:01:40] Speaker A: So he's older than Omar Gonzalez. [01:01:42] Speaker C: Yes, but he's also starting every game at center back for the MLS cup winner. And Omar hasn't started every game in like five years. [01:01:49] Speaker A: Right. And Ibiaga hadn't started a bunch of games for lafc. He was kind of he was thrust into that role late in the season, wasn't he? [01:01:56] Speaker C: Yeah, for most seasons with lafc, he was about a halftime starter and then he started down the stretch and the bulk of the back end of that season, including winning MLS cup. But you know, Dallas watched tape, they saw a guy performing at a pretty good level and they went out and signed somebody else's center back. So if you need a center back and you remember they had a deal for a center back this summer and the guy failed his physical so they pushed that one. So now it's like, crap, we need another center back. I'm just saying it's not going to shock me if this is real. [01:02:23] Speaker A: All right, but here's. But again, everybody comes to this podcast to listen. Listen for Buzz's opinion. If you find out that the two center back additions in this off season are Lala Sabubikar and Maya Yoshida. [01:02:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:36] Speaker A: How are you going to feel about that? [01:02:38] Speaker C: Well, I'm not too thrilled, but it is totally fcd. Like this is what they do, right? They. They go out and they get somebody else's shelf player, you know, you know, this guy like in a vacuum, this guy had a one plus one as a death piece. Or maybe he's still got plenty left on the rubber and maybe he's good enough. Maybe he outplays Ibi or Nakosi. I mean, look at this point, right? You know, you have an IB and you have a Nicosi. You have a Nicosi. You in the past, Abubakar was better than he is today. You know, you have on all those guys. If this other dude comes in and all of a sudden it's center back by committee or if just the competition alone determines that one guy has to. These guys have to play better than the other dudes to keep their spot. Maybe it's not so terrible, you know, I mean, for where you are and from what you had last year. It's not how you win MLS Cup. But if a lot of these dudes are on one or two year deals, you know, I can live with what happens over the. Like you're in a rebuild, right? So this is not the center back one we wanted or expected. And for all I know it's complete garbage that somebody was just playing a joke. So it may not even be real. But yeah, for sure. We're still talking about SC Dallas. Who, you know, do you want to. I'm not necessarily in favor of a DP center back. I don't like to spend DP money at center back. I think you can get a Reto Ziegler TAM center back and that's fine. So if this guy at 36 is still gotten enough on the rubber to be Reto Ziegler for a couple of seasons, I don't hate that. That's not awful. [01:04:06] Speaker A: It would, it would not surprise me if Dallas in 25 ends up with a pair of twins as their four center backs. Two old guys and two young guys who are very error prone. [01:04:16] Speaker C: Yeah, you mix and match them. You know, you. Nobody plays 34 games. Really. It's going to be competition, training who's playing the best. You know, maybe even some kid comes along and maybe Carl Sante becomes the guy you want him to become. You never know what's going to happen. You know, it'll be up to coaching at that point. We're in an era now and this is what's new for us. And hard to understand where it used to be that you had a very clear, definitively defined starting set and then you had a couple of young kids or guys, you were developing something. And Dallas is moving past that. They're getting to the stage where they're going to now have full blown veteran pros too deep at every position. And that's not the end of the world. If they can move out some of this money, maybe we can talk about in the summer or next winter. Maybe there's a real CB one on big time money that comes in, but it's tough. [01:04:57] Speaker A: Is there a nerdy stats thing you want to throw out there about Yoshida that would make somebody feel good or bad about this? If in fact it's even true and not just some sort of weird website error? [01:05:06] Speaker B: I'll be honest with you. I would really like if Yoshida was assigned here. I mean he played really well and for. For the Galaxy. I mean he was their captain. He's a veteran presence on a team. I know he's a bit older. I know he's 36 and the only thing that I might be a little wary about is how can he handle the Texas heat? Because that's a legitimate issue that we've seen center backs have issues with, for lack of a better word. [01:05:31] Speaker A: Mr. Martinez, I think so. [01:05:34] Speaker B: We. That's one thing that I think that needs to be aware of. But I mean, outside of that, I think Yoshida would be an excellent signing for a team, to be honest. And the Galaxy are struggling, would struggle to afford to keep him. I'm sure they want to, but they're up against a cap with all the MLS cup bonuses that are hitting the contracts now. So again, this could be an opportunity that they could capitalize on there. And I personally would like Yoshida. I. I don't think he would be a bad signing at all especially. It's not ideal. Right. They have the money, they have the room to make I think a bigger move and give me a younger guy and actually put in a transfer fee. But if this is the case, the situation, I don't think it's a bad move by any means. I mean, to be honest, I think it's a good move and it probably puts a captain on the team. [01:06:14] Speaker A: Armand, do you like draft talk? [01:06:17] Speaker B: I mean, it's fun. [01:06:20] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Well then you'll enjoy this because since we last talked, Dallas did draft three new players. This also gives me tired head. But Buzz, I know this is one of your favorite things in the whole world, so why don't you tell us about Enzo, Sam and Mohamed. [01:06:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's probably an 80 chance that none of these dudes play for SC Dallas next year. [01:06:39] Speaker A: Wow. Any of them? [01:06:40] Speaker C: Wow. Yeah. Enzo Newman is a. Listen, they changed the draft a year or two ago. Armand, where they. You can now draft underclassmen. [01:06:47] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [01:06:47] Speaker C: So Enzo Newman is a sophomore. He's basically like 18, 19 years old. This is like, this is like drafting Malachi Molina. Does that help you? No. Pierce looking blank now. Molina plays for North Texas. Scott. He's a right back on a hybrid deal. He might be a homegrown coming up this season. This is the right drafting. Herbert Inay has played two games. Right. So he's a clone of those guys. Now you may think he's got a great upside. The chances he's on the FC Dallas roster next year. Now they may sign him, but he ain't playing for an SEC Dallas next year he's going to be playing for Northeast SC the whole year. If they even sign him, if he doesn't stay in school. Because now the way this works is you can leave a guy in school. And remember Dallas just started a U23 team to play in these summer leagues. So you bring him into your 23 team, you're coaching them up, then leave them in Oregon State for the fall. I'm just saying, like the chances of that guy signing with the first team this season are actually not that high. The most likely player to be signed is the second pick, Sam Sarver, who out of Indiana. He was a senior. A lot of people had him as one of the top five or six strikers in the whole thing. He's more of a winger striker, but he's got packs and pommel, goal energy and vibes and tenacity and non stopness and like ever, ever Energizer Bunny no quit. So there's a little something. There's more. [01:08:01] Speaker A: Hopefully not the hip impingement. [01:08:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I just meant vibes, not physicality if not injury. But it's more likely that dude makes the FC Dallas roster than the other guy is. And he's a second round pick. So more than likely he's starting the year in North Texas. SC is too as well if he'll take that deal. And the third guy they picked again, another sophomore, another project player. He's the guy. His name is Muhammad Cset. He's played, he's Canadian, but he's also. Oh dang it man. Who's he play for? [01:08:28] Speaker B: Molly. [01:08:29] Speaker C: Molly? Yeah, he was once in the Olympics for Molly this year. So a guy with a little upside potential perhaps, but a big time project. So none of these names are going to mean anything to you if you care about 2025 SC Dallas. These guys are all about long time far ahead with the. Maybe the exception of Sarver. If, if you really do jettison all these wingers and forwards and sell all these pieces, then there's room for him. But otherwise I think even he's in North Texas sc. So the draft's about like they sent John Gall to do the draft, which I tell you, like not right. He's the one that headed up all the picks and everything and like they did quotes from him about the picks because that's what they're going to be playing. [01:09:04] Speaker A: Well, I saved the best because if sometime several days ago you heard some sort of weird sound that sounded like some sort of orgasmic bear, that was buzz hearing the news of this signing. [01:09:18] Speaker C: Is this the Caleb Swan signing? [01:09:20] Speaker A: Well, that's the one that you made the funny sound about. [01:09:22] Speaker C: Yeah, this, this is the next homegrown signing. Hybrid deal. They're all gonna be hybrid deals going forward. Basically they stash them at North Texas for a year or two and then they come up to the first team on a real homegrown deal. I'm just really excited about this guy. This is the best 2007 in the Metroplex for about 10 years now in my opinion. He reads the game about a second ahead of everybody else at that level. Phenomenally smart player, phenomenally tenacious, hard working, great touch, places an 8, but can get forward with some punch. Really great player. [01:09:53] Speaker A: Are you surprised he signed a North Texas deal? And didn't try to go ply his trade outside somewhere else. [01:09:59] Speaker C: Well, he had a full gojo route or whatever. No, he had a full ride set up in Maryland. His dad is a college football player. His mom was a college soccer player. This is a kid that would have valued the education, would have valued the chance at Maryland. Might have been a quick one and out possibly, but had had accelerated his high school graduation. You remember that when that last time that happened right where he was graduating in December. He was graduating right now. So he'd have been in Maryland right this minute, you know, playing in their spring ball. So he was moving his career ahead, you know, which is always a good sign of like where the kid is and his ability. So they negotiated a deal and signed him up. And this is again, this is not a guy you're going to care about in 2025. He's going to spend all season with North Texas SC. But this is the best player in his class and this is a good signing in my opinion. [01:10:44] Speaker A: All right, an hour and 10 minutes in and we've covered a lot of ground, but I do feel like we owe this person a little bit of time to address something. We spent a lot of time knocking this dude and maybe he still deserves to be knocked. But as we talked about earlier, this has been one of the most active off seasons for this club in some time. Buzz, where's your mood or your buzz o meter on Andre Zenada these days? [01:11:11] Speaker C: Well, a lot of it's going to depend on how these guys end up working out. The things that I like about what they're doing are the recognition of the, of the bad salaries that they've got to fix. That's new, that recognition. The, the fact that they recognizing and finally admitting that they needed center back help. Even if the center backs are not what everybody wanted, at least they've recognized that they needed to do something. I do have a question right this minute about who the second left back on this team is going to be. Maybe it's Nolan, but if it's not Nolan, I don't know who it is. That's an important question that has to be answered. But a lot of the importance of these moves and a lot of my lack of these moves is going to come down to the money. Like you can't bury your team year after year after year with bad contracts. At some point you have to be better at contracts than this. You know, the Shaq Moore deal looks great. Well, that's pretty a lot of money for right back and if you still have to carry some of his signing, which I don't think you do, but if you do, that's problematic. You know what, what does Anderson Julio's option accelerate to? We don't actually know what his acceleration was. So again, so we see the money. And, and, and if they end up being a full gut of the team, selling Moussa and selling Allen, even like those, if we get to that level, then it's like, you know, we're looking at a full complete tear down and who the hell knows what we're looking at? But right now I applaud the direction of these moves in terms of fit with the coach. [01:12:32] Speaker A: Armand, I'm going to give you the opportunity to opt out of that answer. Since you're a former employee, I don't want to put you in a position. [01:12:38] Speaker B: No, I'm in. I'm okay. Yeah, no, blow it out, brother. [01:12:41] Speaker A: Say when I say your piece. [01:12:43] Speaker B: No, no, no, but look, I think, look, they diagnose there's a problem, right? And the problem are, you know, for example, Paul's deal, they've cleared up the deck. They have a boatload of money to work with. The moves that they have right now, they didn't spend that much and they've been pretty good moves to dip their hands into getting Julio to getting Shaq Moore. Even bringing in Abubakar as like a part of your center back rotation is a, is a pretty good move. The question is, what are they going to do with the rest of this money? Again, we could talk about a surplus of almost $4 million in allocation money. What can they do with this? That's the question that I've been thinking about and staring at. How, what can they do with the rest of this money? There's so many options that they could go, but where they have to do. [01:13:29] Speaker A: It, they have to spend it, right? Because if they don't spend it by the end of the season, they lose it. [01:13:33] Speaker B: Essentially. You'd have to spend it or trade, trade for a player that then you could use later. Like for example, the one way that Gam kind of carries is if you trade for a player and then you get to keep the player, obviously based on their contract and whatever. So they have to spend it, right? And look again, they've diagnosed a problem, they've cleared the decks. So now the next step is, okay, how do you go about filling in the rest of this roster? And I think the biggest victory and I think the a move that Andre has to be applauded for is understanding The Areola situation saying, hey, if they, if they successfully dumps Palaure Ella's contract, it's a win. It's a big win across multiple fronts for the club. [01:14:12] Speaker A: All right, so Buzz, let's work under the most. I feel like which is the most reasonable outcome of this based on what we know. If 2025 starts with Jesus and Paul gone but Musa is still here and Velasco is still here, Shaq Moore is here. Anderson, Julio is here. You've got at least one new center back I'll throw you. I'm going to keep you sheet out of this since no idea how legitimate that conversation is. That could be a website error for all we know. [01:14:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:14:42] Speaker A: Is Dallas in 2025 a better team than it was in 2024 or worse? [01:14:49] Speaker C: Oh, it's not worse, it's better. The stuff they've done on the defense will help the defense be better. It's not going to be elite, but it is improved. As Lamont said, it won't be. It's not going to take a step backwards. Shackmore is a good piece, makes you a little bit better across the back. Adding in some center back pieces makes you a little bit better across the back. A lot of it will depend on what cb if it whatever this next center back is is going to determine a lot about how I feel about your defensive rebuild. The the Armand is correct. You'll have an open DP spot and a boatload of money. Now how you use that may end up being the only thing we care about in the long term. DPs are humongously, massively, massively important. If you hit a home run with that dp, none of this rest of this matters and you have the trick is because you have a overperforming player that's young and on a really low contract. Logan Farrington, he gives you the luxury to not use the DP on the place you vacated. You don't need to use it on Paul, you don't need to use on Jesus. You don't need to use it at right wing because you have Logan Farrington. So now you can pick another position and you can bring in a absolutely dominant player at a DP level for another spot. If you have Musa, you don't need that. If you have Laska, you don't need that. Julio Bernie something on the left wing, that's fine. Logan on the right with various other combinations. Maybe your home runs are coming along. So now you can look at central midfield perhaps. There's a rumor they're trying to dump Sebastian Legette's contract there's another chunk of of TAM salary gap like big huge chunk of money. So your Aramindi is gone. You put yourself in position maybe to bring in a absolute superstar at the 68 sort of position perhaps if you Mendy gone or many currently is out. [01:16:41] Speaker A: Of contract and Austin, Austin went and got somebody else. [01:16:45] Speaker C: They got somebody else in that same position. So did Dallas. Dallas got Ramiro in sort of that same position. So but they have, they have room to bring R Mini back and still because his contract at his age probably will be like as it is now 4, 450 whatever. Not a big deal, right? You could still bring him back, that's fine. But if you vacate Jesus and Ferrera you now have the chance to bring in a big time stud prime of career beast of a player somewhere. I look at that 68 spot as you're bringing in your Carlos Gresso again not Carlos Grezzo literally that kind of player, that kind of impact stamping the middle of the field would do wonders because then if you add a CD1 as a Tam or something like that you pause is great. You're looking pretty damn good. If you bring in, you know your Simo Valkari, you're that's probably way under budget at this point. Oscar Pereja type guy. Lionel Alvarez, right? Richard Maroney, somebody of this kind of stature and weight in the center of your park. That is a lot for your team, man. In my opinion. [01:17:50] Speaker A: There's a whole bunch of curious listening to this pod that just heard you say Richard Mulrooney and have no idea who you're talking about. [01:17:56] Speaker C: Well Mitchell already I think won four MLS Cups and he was with FC Dallas and he hurt his knee and then that's when Clark got fired and that and that when tomorrow took over and said we traded the we trusted the wrong people and then they turned around and traded Mr. Morini. I'm like you're out of your mind because that Clark's team when Richard hurt his knee that team cratered. You know that and he was the reason why that particular team. [01:18:17] Speaker A: But Richard Mulroney was a badass, vastly. [01:18:20] Speaker C: Underrated player, fantastic player. If you could add a player like that in the middle of Dallas field. Now listen, it doesn't have to be a little field wherever you want to use this money you're going to have a pile of money and an open DP spot to actually crush a signing. And if they crush a signing none of the rest of this crap Matters if you crush that signing because then you'll have Moose of Alaska and whoever this is in front of a workman like defense and a pause. That's a pretty damn good team right up the spine. Spend your money up the spine. [01:18:50] Speaker A: MLS101aman Anything else you want to share or insights, observations, opinions, jokes? [01:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean well I use my drone show jokes. I can't use it again. Heartbreaking. But no, look, and again to Buzz's point, they actually could do something different, right? They actually, instead of going adding a third dp, they could actually say hey, we're going to keep Musa and velasco and go4u22 players which are actually a lot harder to hit on but you actually gain another 2 million in GAM to use on other pieces as well. So that could push they're out their amount of GAM to almost 6 million which again is a lot. It's an immense amount. But then you could spend it on players that are above, you know, that TAM threshold, Buy them down, buy them down, buy them down, etc and bring in bigger contract players that may proven MLS vets, guys that maybe can pick off rosters like a Shaq more for example, like that number, that number, that range for example. So there's two ways Dallas can operate here. It's going to be really interesting to see which way they operate. And remember U22 spots are pretty valuable as well too because again you can spend whatever their salary just has to be below the TAM number and they only hit at the contra the salary cap at 200k which is nothing. It's such a small minuscule number. So there's two ways that FC Dallas can operate. Obviously you'd prefer I think the three plus three for the more instant impact but there is moments where you could go u22 like Diego Gomez when he was first signed from Paraguay to Miami was a U22 player before he, you know, moved on, graduated, he graduated out of the program. Yovalage for example for the LA Galaxy, just graduated from the U22 at the age of 26. Remember, you can be a U22 until 26 years old and he was a key part of them. It's so stupid but he was a key part of their, their championship winning team and that's. And that's what made it work. [01:20:48] Speaker C: I, I'm totally with you, I hear you. But here's the thing. Name a U22 initiative player Dallas has hit on. [01:20:54] Speaker B: Oh, I agree with you. I'm just saying it's an Option. [01:20:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:21:00] Speaker B: No, Enos, Texas Soccer. Yeah, he won a MLS next bro. Check. [01:21:07] Speaker C: You just wait till you see him next season with Dallas and tell me again about that. [01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, Armand, are you telling me that Dallas has enough of these Garber Bucks to potentially trade for Lionel Messi? Is that how much Garber Bucks they have? [01:21:24] Speaker B: I mean, you need a lot more than garbage, Bug. You may have to sell off the other half the stadium that they're renovating. [01:21:29] Speaker C: You know what you do have that you would have is you would have the Garber Bucks to trade for this really great Seattle Sounders winger, Jesus something. You know, he'd be about 3 million gam. And he was on a con. It's not a DP contract, it's a TAM contract. You bring him right in. [01:21:46] Speaker A: I do what? Part of me spends a few moments of my day over the last few days putting myself in Jesus's shoes, thinking, man, I'm glad to get out of here, but now I gotta go play on the turf in Seattle. And for a guy that's had some muscle injuries and a long running, some abdominal wall stuff, that seems like a weird mix to me. [01:22:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it does. That's how desperately he wants to go. [01:22:10] Speaker B: Yeah. He wants out. [01:22:12] Speaker A: Yes. And I'm sure Dallas is eager to get him out of the locker room. [01:22:16] Speaker C: I bet you're going to see a slow action on that deal because of the. The desire to wait a bit on the window here, Give it a week or two. Slow. Play it slow, Roll it, see if someone comes calling. Because, you know, anything approaching three or slightly over three is a better deal for Dallas. Honestly, anything over two, given that's what you're getting from Seattle, is two plus some stuff. [01:22:38] Speaker A: Well, you know, Jesus and his people need to be careful because Seattle isn't going to wait forever. They may find a better opportunity and if he probably a deadline, if he farts around too long, he may end up without any options. [01:22:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:51] Speaker A: And he's stuck here and Dallas is stuck with him. [01:22:53] Speaker C: So one more thing about Paul. Worst case scenario, you can just use your, your one season buyout on Paul as is. It's better to trade him for something and then use the buyout, you know, and get a pile of balls back. But you can't just do it yourself and just buy them out yourself. [01:23:09] Speaker A: Right. [01:23:09] Speaker C: You know, and then you can even maybe resign them yourself if you want to stay here, or just let them go wherever and don't care. You know, it's worth it to get out from underneath the contract. [01:23:16] Speaker A: Well, that was A lot, boys and girls. Armand, it was a treat to have you. It was great to see you again. I love the mustache, by the way. [01:23:23] Speaker B: Thank you, thank you. [01:23:24] Speaker A: And for those, since this is an audio only podcast, Armand is wearing a very sweet what appears to be original Dallas Tornadoes Jersey with the most 70s fly collar you've ever seen. He looks like he's getting ready to go to the disco. That's ridiculous. [01:23:40] Speaker B: I love a disco. I can't lie. I love a good little disco. [01:23:46] Speaker A: Thanks for coming on the pod, Armando. It's great to talk to you again. [01:23:49] Speaker B: It was great talking to you guys again. This is fun. We got. Definitely gotta do it again. [01:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. You got anything you want to pimp. [01:23:57] Speaker B: My blue sky and Twitter. Is that a thing? Do we pimp blue skies now? [01:24:01] Speaker C: Sure, sure. [01:24:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So just at Armand Kafai, which is my name, and you just look it up and you'll see it somewhere. Are the podcast I wrote John Arnold and Daniel Robertson called the Hex. Yeah. And some back healed stuff I do. That's really it. [01:24:15] Speaker A: Really? [01:24:16] Speaker B: I mean, it's all I have to pimp. It's not much. And this mustache, I guess. [01:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Is that Joe Clary really mean? [01:24:24] Speaker B: Oh, Joe Lowry is amazing. He's also like super young. Oh, he's like 24, 25. I had no idea he started writing like when he was super young. Yeah. So, okay. [01:24:35] Speaker A: He doesn't seem mean at all. [01:24:36] Speaker B: I just was making a joke. Yeah, he's a good guy. [01:24:38] Speaker A: All right. Happy New Year, Armand. [01:24:41] Speaker B: Happy New Year to both you guys. [01:24:42] Speaker A: Buzz, it's good talking to you again. I hope you had a good holiday season, sir. [01:24:46] Speaker C: Thanks, man. I appreciate y'all being here for a season 28 of third degree and season seven of this podcast. Podcast. Can you believe that? [01:24:53] Speaker A: Did you get a kick ass Christmas gift from Amy? [01:24:55] Speaker C: I did, yeah. [01:24:57] Speaker A: Would you like to share it with the curious? [01:24:59] Speaker C: No. [01:25:00] Speaker A: Whoa. [01:25:02] Speaker C: I posted pictures of it all over social media. It was a trip to Italy to watch some soccer. [01:25:08] Speaker A: Oh, I thought you're going to tell us a gross story. I'm glad you didn't post those pictures. [01:25:13] Speaker C: No, just the pictures of us in Italy. [01:25:15] Speaker A: That's right. [01:25:16] Speaker C: On our. On our. On our 11 years later honeymoon. [01:25:19] Speaker A: And you went to the gelato shop I suggested to you. [01:25:21] Speaker C: You did? [01:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it was awesome, wasn't it? [01:25:23] Speaker C: Yeah, it was good. [01:25:24] Speaker A: Well, it was great to talk to you, man. Happy New Year to you too. [01:25:27] Speaker C: Thanks, sir. Thank you. [01:25:29] Speaker A: By the time somebody listens to this, some of this may have happened. None of it may have happened. I have no idea. But thank you, Curious for listening. Happy New Year to you. We hope you had a good holiday season. And we we'll see where this all falls out. And we will speak to you next week, correct? [01:25:46] Speaker C: Buzz oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. [01:25:48] Speaker A: All right. On the next edition of Third Degree, the podcast. [01:25:52] Speaker C: Dan, come back. [01:25:54] Speaker A: Third Degree the third Degree Ned Podcast Third Degree the third Degree N Podcast Third Degree the third Degree N Podcast Third Degree.