3rd Degree the Podcast #303

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Armin, how did you describe the game? [00:00:01] Speaker B: Ass water. [00:00:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Woo. [00:00:12] Speaker A: 3Rd degree the 3rd degree Ned podcast. 3rd degree the 3rd Degree Ned podcast. 3rd Degree the 3rd degree Ned podcast. Third degree the 3rd degree Nap podcast. [00:00:28] Speaker C: 3Rd degree. The podcast is brought to you by listeners like you. If you enjoy this podcast, if you enjoy our work@third degree.net or any of the social medias, why not join us at patreon.com thirddegree and give us some support? If you join at the Three Amigos level, you can join our wonderful Discord and the fantastic community. Join there. As always, thanks for your support and on with the podcast. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Well, hello there, FC Dallas Curious fan. Welcome to a very Sad episode of 3rd Degree. The podcast on the panel today is not Dan Crook, because he's very busy fulfilling a very special custom onlyfans request video today. So he's busy. Doing that always takes priority. So in his stead is the guy that we bring in to talk numbers and be soccer nerdy. It is. We mean that in a loving way. Armin Kafai. Howdy, Armin. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Hey, guys. What's up? How's. How's everyone doing? I know Buzz is on the high because of Newcastle, but. [00:01:28] Speaker A: Yes. And there he is. Your hero, my hero, everybody's hero. Editor, Founder, third degree.net and the original soccer influencer and the happiest Newcastle fan on the planet, Buzz Carrot. Come in, Buzz. [00:01:43] Speaker C: Hey, Buzz. Maybe not the planet, but I have been following them since 1990. Ish. Roughly. So they haven't won trophies since before I was born. So I'm pretty years. Yeah, I mean, I think the last even mediocre trophy was in 69. [00:01:57] Speaker A: Yes. [00:01:57] Speaker C: Before I was born. So it's like I'm pretty stoked to see the team I've followed for a long time wins something. So that's kind of cool. [00:02:04] Speaker A: I dawned on me today when I saw you talking about this, this might, Well, I guess U.S. open cup championships for Dallas would fall into the same category. But I was about to say this may be the first time you've seen a soccer team that you love win something. [00:02:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely thought of, you know, FC Dallas winning two Open Cups, which I, you know, have watched or watched both of those happen on tv, you know, or one in person and one on tv. And supporter shield. That's gonna say Buzz. [00:02:31] Speaker B: We sat next to each other for the 2016. [00:02:33] Speaker C: I was in the stadium for that one. [00:02:34] Speaker A: You guys were lame. I was at the original one. [00:02:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. To be fair, in 97, Peter for the original one, I was still living in Boston working on Revolution games and. [00:02:44] Speaker A: Armand probably wasn't alive. [00:02:46] Speaker B: I was when they went 97. [00:02:49] Speaker C: 97, yeah. [00:02:51] Speaker B: What day that was in June, was it? [00:02:53] Speaker C: It was after the end of the season, wasn't it? [00:02:55] Speaker A: Peter hadn't DC1 as balls. It was November, December then. [00:03:02] Speaker B: I was like five months old. [00:03:04] Speaker C: It was. It was late in the year. D.C. had won the season. [00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:08] Speaker C: So, like they were the big favorites and Dallas went to Uipui and beat. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Them three or four months old. So. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, you were not soccer conscious yet. Quite yet. You were. You were just a few weeks away from that. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Yep. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Well, Buzz, congratulations. I'm incredibly happy for you. I also feel incredibly sports washed out of this past week, but that's a different story for a different time. [00:03:31] Speaker C: You know, what can you do? [00:03:32] Speaker A: Imagine being a Liverpool fan. [00:03:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:03:34] Speaker A: All that sports washing. [00:03:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:03:36] Speaker A: So. All right, well, congratulations. But are you going to get yourself a Carabao cup trophy replica to put next to your Emmy behind you that you can show off to everybody? [00:03:45] Speaker C: No, no, I. I did buy the throwback Newcastle Brownell jersey that they did, you know, a couple months ago. [00:03:51] Speaker A: Did it come with some booze? [00:03:53] Speaker C: I wish, because Newcastle brand was a good beer. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Does it smell like booze? Like somebody spilled some beer on it? [00:03:58] Speaker C: No, because it's new and I don't spill beer on stuff. [00:04:01] Speaker A: Well, no, like maybe I thought maybe they would send it to like it like been on the floor of a dirty Newcastle bar at some point. Just give it that real vibe. No, it's a beautiful shirt. I'm happy for you. Armon, thanks for filling in for Dan today. [00:04:17] Speaker B: Of course. [00:04:18] Speaker A: And I'm stalling because I really don't want to talk about this because, boy, how. Yeah, here's the thing, guys. And Steve Davis did this all a favor by rolling out the two awful stats as Dallas drops a big one at home to Vancouver. We wondered what would happen if Vancouver, who, by the way, was coming off a road trip to Mexico and. And by the way, in the high of getting out to the. To the next round of the Champions Cup. I think I'm saying that right. And then traveling to Dallas. So historically, I don't. Like I asked this question last week and I didn't look it up, but I'm fairly certain that if you do the research, ML teams that travel for a Cup tournament game and then travel immediately thereafter for a league game probably don't fare well historically in league games. But here, Vancouver did the business and beat up Dallas. Badly and to the point where Steve Davis himself even helped answer some questions I had after the game. This is Dallas's first time since 2009 for losing their first two home opening matches. And for the first time since 2022, which doesn't seem that long ago, Dallas had no shots on target in a particular game. So I think that kind of lays it out. Buzz, we've wondered about this team. We've had last lot of questions. This was going to be a roller coaster season. Four games in. This is kind of the low point so far. [00:05:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. It's most definitely the low point. This is one of the worst home performances a lot of people have seen. Coach Quill said that he the game plan was to out possess Vancouver, hoping they'd be tired and show some weak legs. And that did not happen and they did not have weak legs. You know, it's very possible that of the teams that are going to Mexico, are they, excuse me, Vancouver only had to go to Monterey and then to Dallas. So like if you're going to pick a Mexican team to play and then come to Dallas, that's about as good as you're going to get is go play Monterey because that's pretty much the closest stadium to here in that particular league. And so whatever tired play you're expecting out of Vancouver, that did not happen. They are now 4 0, undefeated in the league and right now the hottest or best team in the league. They've only allowed something like six shots all season. I mean they're a phenomenal team and they played FC Dallas off the park comprehensively. Like there was, there was only one tiny little phase of anything Dallas did that was even worth being positive about at all. It was just one of the more comprehensive defeats we've seen. And obviously you can start to see cracks appearing in sort of the facade that is the player and coaching staff by their body language and countenance and how they carry themselves. And hopefully Quill can rally this thing because otherwise you're looking at a team in this kind of performance that could be the trigger for a really bad season. You know, when you have a loss like this beginning of the year, you really are on the precipice of it turning into a horrible mess. Or perhaps you can rally and make some good out of it. But. But you know, we talked a lot this winter, all of us, about how this was a wooden spoon team until they got Lucha Acosta. And that maybe makes them possibly a team that could fight their way into the playoffs, but not the Way it's going right now, they're not going to be. [00:07:31] Speaker A: Armin, you are the numbers guy and I'm wondering if you have looked at the data in any way and come out with anything that gives you any kind of ray of hope that there is something to work with here moving forward. [00:07:46] Speaker B: I really hate to be a Debbie Downer, but a. The sample size is small, so take us to the grain of salt. But no, because it's difficult because the Houston game, we. That game, you saw two goals. Kind of gifted, right? So you kind of look at the xg. You have to be careful when you're analyzing that stuff. The Colorado game, it seems like Colorado's defense is very leaky. That's one thing that we're starting to see. Against San Jose, we saw, I think they had like, San Jose had like 2.5 or 2.6 expected goals. But Zack Stefan was amazing in that match. I don't know if you guys have caught the highlights of that game, but he was absolutely phenomenal in that game. Then you, you play Chicago, you struggle to produce above one expected goal, basically not including the penalty that was delayed from Musa. And then this performance is really rough. And you, you see the ideas of them trying to get Lucho Acosta on the ball and getting Pet involved, etc, but overall it's. It's not looking great through these first four games. But again, to emphasize there's only four games, like there's plenty of more football left to be played. Soccer. Excuse me. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Yes. It's okay. Call it whatever you want. [00:08:48] Speaker C: Yeah, we're multilingual on this show. We can understand. [00:08:52] Speaker A: So let's run through the game kind of chronologically and I'll start off. You know, Apple TV production is quite high. I. The, the. Did they change the camera angle a little bit from the last game? Buzz? It looked a little higher. Not a. [00:09:09] Speaker C: Well, the previous game, it was horrible. It was way too low. They had moved it down, so I didn't notice it this game. So I'm pretty sure they moved it back up because I would have spotted right away if it was not why. [00:09:20] Speaker A: It appeared that you saw all of the tarp and you saw the signage at the top of it more regularly that said coming soon or new Toyota stadium or whatever. [00:09:29] Speaker C: Well, you remember the previous game, somebody even stood up in front of the camera, the game camera, and I was like, oh, no, this is. Who put that camera where it is? [00:09:35] Speaker A: We didn't. [00:09:35] Speaker C: That part. Yeah. [00:09:36] Speaker A: We didn't test that up before the game, did we? No, I that was noticeable to me. But the opening shot, the wide shot of the stadium being mostly, you know, at least in the camera view, empty is just really distracting and off putting when you, when you go into it, because you're already in a stadium that has one end of it that's always empty and just looks like a construction zone or a car dealership. 24, 7. The thing across it just. It just makes for weird watching of a soccer match. [00:10:06] Speaker C: Well, you and I are partially influenced, I'm going to claim or say by the early days of MLS when tarping of stadiums was a thing all the time. Yeah, it was a big, huge stadiums. [00:10:17] Speaker A: Ptsd. [00:10:18] Speaker C: Yeah. So the olds have that. Exactly. That we have. When we see those tarps, we go, oh, my God. No. Because it reminds us of how bad it was when you have these 5k attendance games and these tarps everywhere. [00:10:30] Speaker A: I never thought about that. You're right. Yeah. [00:10:32] Speaker C: I mean, it wasn't just like when you were in the Cod bowl, which held 80,000 or something at the time. [00:10:36] Speaker A: 75, obviously. [00:10:37] Speaker C: Yeah. Whatever it was, obviously you're tarping off lots of that. But it was even small things that were like 15,000, 20,000 stadiums that had tarping. That's how bad it was sometimes. And so we see those tarps and I'm not joking. When I see those tarps, my motions hurt. Like, I. I see them and I. It just makes me feel terrible. I know why they exist now, but the throwback of like, oh, here we go. Because you just know what people are going to say about se Dallas because of those damn tarps. Every game people are going to be like, this team sucks. They can't even fill up that stadium, you know, because people don't know. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Well, I had two other observations even before the game started. One was that, and this made me laugh out loud, that the Apple TV score bug, you know, they always show off a team's primary color. For Dallas, its primary color was navy blue. [00:11:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I wonder who did that. [00:11:27] Speaker A: Not red. Nope, nope. Dallas red. Red. Dallas. Nope, nope. Navy blue. And then the other part was the hat. Eric Quill changed his hat. Watch. [00:11:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:40] Speaker A: So here's the thing. He switched to one of those upside down Dallas hats, and he also chose to go to a color of which the other team was wearing in white. And I thought my immediate first joke is, is this cool or is this a jinx? [00:11:57] Speaker C: Well, he's gonna go back now. There's no way he's wearing that one again. He's gonna go back to the red One for sure. [00:12:02] Speaker B: Look cool. [00:12:03] Speaker C: I don't know. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a bit. I'm a big hat fan, so. [00:12:08] Speaker C: Yeah, in a vacuum, that's a great hat. But like, with that performance and the fact that we were talking about the red hat all season, now all of a sudden he changes it, gets washed. [00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. Well, I thought that was an ominous sign until 48 seconds into the game, Dallas had its first unforced turnover. Yep. And that was setting. Set a very early tone of just a needless turnover. And then it kind of went from there. I said at 10 minutes. I have this note 10 minutes into this game, and I'm fairly certain Farrington, Padrino, Legit, and Romero each may have touched the ball once collectively. [00:12:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, whatever the plan was supposed to be, it wasn't working. Vancouver just held the ball the whole time. Dallas couldn't get it off of them. You know, they don't. There's really no press coming from Dallas. You know, they're just willing to let the other team have the ball, which is, you know, what they've been doing all year. So maybe, maybe the plan of, like, get the ball and keep it away didn't somehow get translated to the players because they sure didn't seem like they were in a hurry to try and get it back against Vancouver. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, for the next several, you know, 20 minutes of the game, all of my notes are just related to this issue Buzz, which is Dallas appears to be very confused what to do with the ball in possession. And I, And I watch the game and I'm confused to what the plan is. It's, you know, some teams, you know, in Nico, they used to, like, pass the ball around in a U shape and try to, you know, get in from the side. Some teams try to run through the middle, some try to play long. But I. I honestly don't know. The only thing I can tell is, is they're all desperately trying to figure out how to get Lucha Acosta and whether that's it or not. And. And. And that. And it appears nobody else on the field matters. [00:13:50] Speaker C: Yeah, the. If you remember, Quill's thing is about getting forward just as about as fast as you can. So a lot of times that's resorting to just boot it up front to see if you can get it to Lucho Casa. You know, part of that is because they're. They're finding it completely impossible to build through the middle of the field like they can. They don't have anybody in the back who can Pass where the damage. Their best passing, their best line breaking center back they traded for a bag of peanuts. Their outside backs are not really capable of line breaking. Their center backs are not really capable of line breaking. Their two central mids are trying, but they're not getting the ball. Like Ramiro's effort came up. Not that it was low and he got a whole bunch more touches this time than than legit did. But then those two guys between him had hardly any progressive passes and no progressive dribbles. Like there's no one in there is capable of receiving the pass, turning and dribbling and beating guy passing. So what's happening is since no one can progress through those two lines, the team has just turned into a booted up to one of the wings. And so Lucha Acosta is not even playing in the middle. He's going wide on one side or the other. Previous games it was almost always on the left side. This game it was almost always on the right side. For some reason Moore's trying to run up there, but he's not getting up there in time. So basically Dallas just boots it up into one of the corners and hopes to literature house and get to it and that's it, the whole offense. [00:15:08] Speaker A: So Armand, Buzz and I are old dudes. We watch this game with our eyes. We love the eyeball test and the X eyeball or whatever you want to call it. You on the other hand are really into the numbers and I'm wondering if what we asked you what the numbers are that maybe say something good is possible but what are the reality, the hard maybe sad numbers that you have seen that may explain some of this. [00:15:31] Speaker B: They'Re just not producing opportunities. And I mean guys, you guys can see it with your eyes as well and you can see on the passing charts they cannot. And this problem that you guys are talking about progressing the ball from the midfield up, you can see in the buz you post the passing charts all the time with from our my friend Sebastian. They Musa has to drop in this space. They're trying like the midfielders are all wonky, like they're all super deep in these passing charts. They're not producing score like high quality scoring opportunities. I mean there's like a plethora of things like offense offensively that's turning into issues. And keep in mind like again last year the problem wasn't really offense as much it was they were getting allowing so many goals in the back and conceding quite a bit. Now it's more of okay I when I was listening to Eric Quill in the offseason and what he was saying, I was convinced he was going to go with a more direct style of play. Like, I was convinced from the way the language he was using when it was, oh, hey, we're going to be going forward quickly. We want the way that the guys are talking about, oh, we want to play the ball backwards and do 20 passes. We want to go forward. I mean, they haven't been playing that much direct compared to what we've seen with under Nico, under what was under Nico Estevez. And for better or for worse, I, I, I don't understand that. The whole tactical, I'm with you guys, I can't really get the whole tactical idea because if the whole idea is getting the ball forward quickly, you would again expect just a more direct style play. But we really don't see that with Dallas as much as I thought we would actually see it. [00:17:08] Speaker A: So I don't have a really good opportunity for Dallas until the 25th minute when Moussa does a really nice job of challenging and winning a duel at midfield. And he's on basically one on one with the keeper until he gets caught up with a defender and the defender and he kind of collide at the top of the box and he goes down. He wants a pk. It looked like a fair tackle to me. And then slightly after that, I have written down a nice opportunity when Acosta plays a deep cross from wide into the box to Logan. Logan makes a really nice run and it's just a step too short from taking an attempt. And you know Logan, the way he hits a ball, he probably bangs that in if he'd just been a little closer. But it's 26 minutes into the game before we see anything, really feel anything really positive. And at this point, Vancouver's just got Dallas, for the most part, pinned back in their final third. And Vancouver takes a shot from about 20 yards out with zero pressure. And Dallas just buzzed. They just couldn't get on the ball. And every time they, and when they did get on the ball, the unforced turnovers in this game, it wasn't like Vancouver was pressuring them or pressing them really hard. It was just bad passing all the way around. It was just, it was really, really weird to see how bad they were. At this point of the game. [00:18:23] Speaker C: Vancouver was doing a really nice job of setting up, you know, two lines of three across sort of between one between the Dallas mids and the center and the center backs, and then one behind the Dallas Mids, basically. So they're boxing in Romero in Legit. And so anytime we saw a ball come out, and I don't want to dwell on this topic too much, but anytime we saw a ball come out, Ramire and Legit, pretty much almost universally just passed it right back to one of the backs, and so they were left with like this, they would go, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And then somebody would boot it because it never had any kind of other rotations. Now, to be fair, Anderson Julio is missing. So one of the hallmarks of the Quill system that we've seen so far, they're not a lot, but one of the ones we've seen so far is the fact that with Musa and Acosta playing so high, you really need your wings to get up and play vertically off of them in order to pull defenders away from those two guys and open up space in the middle of the field. If your wings don't get vertical, nothing happens. So Farrington, as you say, finally gets up vertical once Acosta's gone wide. Because Farrington wants to play in the middle and not wide. So Acosta goes wide, Farrington can play up through the middle. You finally saw that happen. But Pedrinho had a nightmare of a game. I thought he was awful. He did not get forward at all. He didn't provide any width on that side, and neither does Marco Faran. So, like, the entire left side of the field was just almost completely worthless. You know, Pedrinho had multiple turnovers and was not creating any linking play. The hope, I think, in terms of playing him, he's a false wing, was that he would come back into the middle and help with the overload that was happening in the middle, and he didn't do that. So I think when. When one of your three best players, the third best player being Anderson Julio, is missing, that's going to hurt you when your offense is so young and undeveloped and really doesn't know, and nobody really knows what they're doing yet with this team. I don't think Quill knows what he's doing with his team. Like every game, he's trying something slightly different. With Lucio Castle, either he is or Lucha Costa is trying something different on his own. And no, they're never going to tell us which one it is. But every game his positioning has been different and every game the way they've been using has been different, and none of them are really working that well. It actually has gotten worse the higher up the field he's gone, the worse it has gotten. The deeper the wings of play, the worse it has gotten. So I think they're going to have to. We'll talk about when we get to what, how you fix it, but. [00:20:34] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:35] Speaker C: It's, you know, the reason there are so few chances. And Armands are right. Zero shots on goal, like, seven shots total is way too low. And then zero shots on goal is just. That's ridiculous. No, that means you're not anywhere near close to a good opportunity to score a goal. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got a bunch of other bummer notes in here until I get to halftime and wrote the worst half Dallas has played all season. And then I asked myself, did they have a shot on goal? No. The answer we found out in the first half. Yeah, we get into, I guess, at halftime. Did you anticipate that he would make any changes? [00:21:09] Speaker C: No. Even if you kind of wanted to. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Because it was still 00. [00:21:14] Speaker C: It's still 00. And your team is still coming together. So, like, yanking the guy at halftime is pretty much telling him he was absolutely crap. And so, like, it's a little early to be transmitting to guys that they're absolutely horrible at this game. You know, like, I think you're absolute garbage. And so you're out. You know, it's. He still has to. He's a very thin roster. The. The depth has got some interesting kids in it, but he can't use it yet. I mean, I was. I was. I started working on our Fun and Games roster rankings that we do, and I got like five or six players down. I was like, wow, is that. Is that it? It's like I. There was like, it was. It turns into trash real fast, into dudes real fast. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done on this roster over the next couple of years if you actually want to compete with it. And so you can't burn it all down today because they have a whole season left. So you can't. You can't. You can't throw a guy away or alienate a guy where he quits completely like this early in the season. So, no, I'm not surprised. There wasn't any changes at halftime. [00:22:12] Speaker A: All right, let's see. So there were no changes. I. I want to say in a Note, in the 50th minute, that moment, Romero loses a ball and then he swipes out on a tackle. I have no idea how he did not get a yellow card for that. Do you remember that moment? It was. [00:22:28] Speaker C: Not specifically. [00:22:29] Speaker A: Yeah, he lost the ball and then he turned around and tried to get the ball back, and he kind of slid at and swiped at a guy. Just. It was kind of a very. The reason why I wrote it down was it was pretty clear he was super frustrated with the entire game. And that was a real demonstration. [00:22:43] Speaker C: Oh, he yelled at Ibiaga a lot. I don't know if you caught that. [00:22:47] Speaker A: Well, speaking of ibiaga, in the 54th minute, Vancouver played that ball in from behind, and Ibby and pause kind of meet each other towards the end. There was some confusion about what was going to happen there. And Pause was. I thought that was interesting because Martin was actually apologizing to Ibiaga. Like, he shouldn't have come out. He should have let Ibby deal with it. Did you remember that play? [00:23:12] Speaker C: A little bit. But what I was going to say about it is you remember that Ibiaga and Oz swap sides, so there probably was some organizational communication, understanding about where. How you're going to play each side. That threw everybody off a little bit. Now, we know Abiagas played on the right before. He did it a whole bunch last year. But like. I'm sorry, on the left before. He did a whole bunch last year. But still, like, when you've been working on it for like, three months, it still throws you off to switch sides. And I imagine that put a little bit of, you know, misunderstanding, miscommunication about where guys would be when I got balls coming out like that. [00:23:44] Speaker A: And then the corner that results from that leads to Vancouver's goal. It was. Man, I. Look, I love pause, but his. His refusal to come out and deal with crosses is the reason why he's still in mls. [00:23:59] Speaker C: He's not good. Well, that. In his feet. He's not very good with crosses. Well, start that play with Pedrinho being 20 yards out of position and asleep. And he doesn't start moving until the ball is actually passed to his guy, who's 20 yards away from him. So that guy gets 15 seconds to cross the ball in and set it up and take plenty of time. And then on the back post, Mars Marco Farfan, his striker drifts back away from him. So Marco loses track of him and then spins him and is beating him. And so two defenders fall asleep. A wonderful ball comes in and the guys cleanly finished it and pauses nowhere near it. So it's a confluence of the fact that Dallas always sucks at cross balls into the box. Part of that is because pause is not good to them. Part of that is because Abiaga is not good at him. Part of them is a far fan's not good at them, so. And part of them is that they never close down guys in those wide spaces. That's been a plot problem for like five years now. Closing down. You go back to all the way when Lucci was coach. Remember getting out and get those crosses, those, those guys. It's not corners always. A lot of it's almost always high from that sort of perpendicular zone 14 out there or outside the top of the box. It's been a problem for five years and they haven't figured it out. So hopefully someday somebody will figure it out. [00:25:09] Speaker A: All right, Armand, at that point they're down one nothing. They haven't had a shot on goal. They're not playing well. I looked, I thought I'm gonna look at the bench and see what Quill's options were. Boy, there's just not a lot in the bag, is there? [00:25:24] Speaker B: Their depth is just so thin. Like they're very top heavy right offensively with, you know, Musa Acosta, etc. And then when you kind of go down the bench, it's like. [00:25:33] Speaker A: But isn't it funny how when the Acosta signing happened, the entire mood and attitude about this season flipped on its head because suddenly we had this MLS NVP on the roster. But it's only one guy. And I and I feel like we tried to like batten down the temperature a little bit and say, hey, you know, isn't. I mean, it's great to have one guy, but this isn't going to change the fact that this still remains a really thin roster and this may be the first moment of the season where that really got exposed. [00:26:10] Speaker C: Well, it's not helping that some of your guys that are better players are out for short term or long term, like Giovanni Jesus we thought would be a good player. You wouldn't even had to have gotten and spent money on Shaq Moore if he's not out for two years in a row, right? Show Cafe Mana was one of their best midfielders last year and we haven't seen him at all. He was sick and now he's hurt again. Paxton Homagal we haven't seen in a year and a half, but he's a million dollar player. He was on the fringes on national team. He got hurt. So there's some. That's where a lot of your best depth and quality that you're not. You're missing right now are. Once you get past that, they've gone back more to their idea of they're going to bring kids through. So a lot of your depth is kids. But clearly right now, Coach Quill doesn't trust those guys yet. We have not seen Tar Scott off the bench. We've not seen Nolan Arus off the bench. Right? And then when it comes to pure roster construction, there isn't anybody else in the back. Shaq Moore is one of your higher paid players. You're not subbing him out. There's no backup for Far Fan. There's only one backup in the middle who's not really going to do much for you, Abubakar. How's that going to help you? There's no backups at all in the midfield because everyone's hurt. Like there just isn't. And the Wings that aren't playing and the Wings aren't playing because they're bad and Anderson's gone. So, like, there's just not much of a roster for Quill to do anything with. So you're right. When he turns around and looks over there, he probably just like, he was like shooting just like we were like, he almost was like shaking his head at one point, like, this is all I have. [00:27:28] Speaker A: Well, his answer was to put on Camungo for Pedrinho. And that's not exactly an inspiring substitution. And based on the way Bernie played for the rest of the game, I have it written down. I'm just going to say it. Bernie is not MLS quality. He is so not ready for this level. I know he had a nice little spurt and I know he's got a fantastic story. But if Bernie Camungo was just a kid out of the academy or some kid they bought from someplace else, and he didn't have this really wonderful story about being an immigrant and the lottery stuff, we would be all over his ass as fans for the, for how poor he's been. [00:28:06] Speaker C: Yeah, but Quill loves him because Quill was the one that sort of found him and discovered him. So that's part of it too. Like, Quill has this faith in the kid, you know, but like, at this point, like, I know as bad as Bernie's playing, as bad as Leo. Choose as. Excuse me, Perdino is playing. I know Leo Chu's in the doghouse, but it's like a 20 minute thing. Just bring on Leo Chu or bring on Tarek Scott. Granted, Tarek Scott came off of a double ACL mcl, but that was a year ago now. Right. He played really well for North Texas last year. [00:28:34] Speaker B: Right? [00:28:34] Speaker A: Well, that was my question. What I. I know you've said this in the discord and stuff. But I mean, because my initial thought is how terrible must Leo Chu be if you can't get in over Bernie Camugo who's been playing this poorly? [00:28:45] Speaker C: Well, I think that's dog house. I think that's warrior mentality because you remember he showed up in camp and lost the beef test. Came in dead last by like a long way and got beat out by 18 year old kids and college draft picks by a significant margin. So a guy that's been a pro for multiple years can't do that. So that guy's good and was way into the dog house and then he got hurt. So like he has. He wasn't training for a couple of weeks. So like, you know, granted at some point you just got to eat your hatred of the guy and go, that might be the best guy I have in that moment because Bernie's been playing so poorly. He really is the only other guy you have left if you think you can't put in target, Scott, but I don't know why you can't. [00:29:26] Speaker A: So the next sub is in the 71st minute. Siki comes on for Legit. And I had, when I saw Sebastian came off the field, I thought, you know, I don't have a real measure. And Armand, you may have some numbers about this, about how Legit season has gone. I don't feel he's been terrible. I don't think he's been great. But I also feel like he's a guy that's playing a little too far back back to maximize his potential or his skill sets. And maybe, maybe being critical of his season is unfair to him because he's, you know, being asked to do something he's not particularly good at. But when we get to the issue of those two guys in ball progression, we know what Romero is. Is the problem then really more about Legit than it is Romero, if you understand my question about progressing the ball. [00:30:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Well, Legit's outplayed Ramiro until this game. This was a really bad game by Legit. So by his standards. So I'm not surprised that he came out for seeking Saing, who is a player who can do some progressive things and get the ball moving a little bit in midfield. The thing is though is that Ramiro's never going to do that because Romero, at least the way he plays here, is a pure six. So you would have been better off probably to bring in Siki for him just because Legit at least can also do that. And maybe they didn't with two guys that can that have some of that ability. It might have been better. Armand, where were you feeling about bringing off Legit at that point? [00:30:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean like, like you guys said legit has been like, has been having the greatest of like years again because of the way I guess how far back I guess they're having him la. I mean he's a guy that if you looked as like expected assist numbers and stuff, like okay, this guy was good like back I think in 22, 23, I want to say when he had like a little bit of time with New England as well. And those are more offensive metrics, right? You're not going to get that from like a 6, 8, you're going to get more of an 8, 10 kind of player. And if you look at American soccer analysis has a stat called goals added, which essentially is like more of like a. Almost like a progressive passing measure of sorts to a degree. And how close are you getting the ball to the net and are you getting in more goals added, expected threat added, positions which are higher up the field. Legit's number right now is the worst he's ever had at FC Dallas by significant margins. Like it's, it's like minus 0.8 which is yeah significantly low compared to what he was. And a lot of it's from his dribbling and yeah passing as well. So a lot of it has been going not. And again like you don't, like you don't need to be forward launching the ball up the field, etc, but when you play consistently negative, it's gonna consistently ding you quite a bit. So I mean that's a metric right there that kind of describes what's going on with Sebastian pretty well. [00:32:09] Speaker A: 78 Dallas is a nice counter attacking opportunity that turns into two bites at it. But they didn't even end up firing a shot at goal. 82. Patterson comes on for Farrington and oh, Lawless Abubakar comes on. I'm just gonna say it. That's the most ridiculous hair I've ever seen in my entire life. That, that looks both distracting and dangerous for an opponent. If that pokes somebody in the eye. [00:32:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm not 100% sure what's going on there. I think it's. Is it dreadlocks that he's wrapping up? I'm not, you know, probably the wrong guys. [00:32:45] Speaker A: There's probably a good listener to the pod, a good curious listener that has a full insight into the hair thing going on there. I'm just saying if I'm a forward and I got to go up for a ball and that, that giant thing is in my face. I'm gonna be mad about that. [00:33:03] Speaker C: It's a good distraction. Yeah. [00:33:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:33:04] Speaker C: Part of it's a good game, then it works. I have some thoughts about that sub. [00:33:09] Speaker A: Because this is the point where he switches to three in the back. [00:33:12] Speaker C: Yeah, that's my thought, is about three in the back. Like I'm, I'm on board conceptually with going three at the back to try and bring. [00:33:19] Speaker A: Boy, talk about ptsd. [00:33:21] Speaker C: Hold on. Yeah, I know I said it conceptually. The idea is that you bring more offensive players further the field. The trick is that you don't do it by bringing on a center back because that brings on more defense. What you have to do is you have to look at the 11 on the field and say who's on the field that can play center back so that I can release everybody else up the field. And that answer is Marco Farban. So you put Marco Farfan as your third center back and then you bring on two offensive subs. You take off, you'll let. That allows more to release up and then you take off your six and you take off your tired wing and you bring on two offensive minded players and that way you are three at the back and now you have some overloads happening. But you don't do it by bringing on a center back because that doesn't give you any extra offense because now Far Fan has to play offense, which is not really a thing. So it's, it's a. The concept is right. The execution of that concept was wrong in this particular case. Yes. I would say that to Eric's face if I got the chance, I would tell him I thought it was wrong. I'd be like, what are you doing? But you know. [00:34:25] Speaker A: Well, they get into added time and I yelled at Far Fan at the television when he gave up the completely BS foul. That just gave the ball back to Vancouver when they were, you know, like 30 seconds left in the game and they were trying to push for a goal. That was really stupid on his part and I had, I made it was so mad at him and yelled at the tv. I actually made a note of about it. [00:34:46] Speaker C: Well, to be fair to some of the subs, Dallas had way more passes and balls into the box in the last 10 minutes than they did in the entire rest of the game. Like Delgado and whoever else came in leaking out my brain the second actually were able to get things for it ain't much. No difference between like by the way. [00:35:06] Speaker A: Vancouver really started to run out of gas at that point too. So. Sure. [00:35:10] Speaker C: But like, you know, know some level of what they tried kind of worked. Which shows that like the idea of going three and bringing an extra body forward would have possibly worked if you'd have done it. [00:35:19] Speaker A: All right, cool. [00:35:20] Speaker C: If you had better players, it would work again. It's all about players. [00:35:23] Speaker A: So let me, let me caveat the question I'm about to ask you with this statement. It's four games into an MLS season. It's so early in the season. I don't care if you're Vancouver and you're four zero or you're owing four, the story is not told yet. This is just the beginning of. We all know MLS doesn't really heat up until August. Sure, you can play yourself out of the playoffs, but you're not out of the playoffs after four games. So my question is, after watching for four games, can either of you tell me what this team is good at? [00:35:59] Speaker C: Armani want to take a swing at that? [00:36:03] Speaker B: I would probably say like we kind of saw it in the Colorado game and again, just emphasize Colorado comics. Everyone play this way, but they're really good at like pre, like when I guess they do it well. They're really good at pressing pretty high and forcing turnovers. We kind of saw that a little bit in the Vancouver game as well too. Like in some moments they were pressing. Vancouver couldn't get the ball, couldn't control the ball. I think that's something with Musa. Musa is a workhorse. I mean he goes up and down a field like crazy. Yeah, Acosta in the right areas can be a workhorse. We all know Farrington likes to go up and down the field quite a bit. And that's. I think, I think Buzz, you said it on a. Either like a burn or post game reaction. That's one of his best traits is just him trying to get the ball like he. Him getting the ball. That's probably the only thing I would say. I mean, outside of that, the defense that doesn't look exactly great. The midfield is virtually non existent. If, and I'm saying this with all due respect, if Anderson Julio's your make or break player, I feel like that's a big problem across, you know, across multiple things. I mean he didn't play that much for RSL last year and he wasn't their make or break player. To be honest with you. He scored quite a bit of goals, but they had moments when he wasn't in the lineup and they were fine. So I don't know. That's my kind of stab at it. Uh, even though that Colorado game is starting to kind of look like a outlier versus what is actually the norm. [00:37:29] Speaker A: It just feels like to me, unless one of three players gets the ball and the three players are obvious, they just don't have anything else going for them in terms of progression or possession. We know they're not very good defensively. Although maybe the highlight of this is that they only gave up one goal. Maybe that's the. Maybe that's the silver lining of this particular loss. [00:37:49] Speaker C: Yeah, the one positive note I had in the whole thing was the idea that you held, you know, a team like Vancouver who leads the league and chances created and all that, all those amazing stats, you held them to, what was it, nine shots, which is not horrible. You know, they. They did get five of them on target. But, you know, like, the. The part of the problem though is that even that silver lining happened because Dallas sat really, really deep and played like a low block. So, yeah, I just mild several lines. [00:38:19] Speaker A: In the first half alone. Vancouver put four balls across the face of the goal and just didn't have anybody. To me, Vancouver, if they had been better in finishing or better and maximizing their opportunities, they probably would have been up for nothing by halftime. [00:38:35] Speaker B: And keep them. And keep in mind, they didn't have. Ryan Gold and Jaden Nelson came off the bench and they're coming off. Coming off midweek in. In Mexico, which is brutal. [00:38:46] Speaker A: I thought Vancouver was really good all over the field, except in the final third in Dallas's end of the field. I thought they were really kind of lacking and really left a lot of. Of meat on the bone. [00:38:57] Speaker C: This is one of those games that's happened a lot in the last six years since Oscar left. Not a lot, but it's happened frequently where Dallas, somewhat early in the season, will play against the team and everyone's like, holy crap, that team is so far better than Dallas. It just demonstrates what a huge gap there is between the best teams and the bad teams. It's just very clear that, like, even if you like the new coach and like some of the moves they're making, this is still the very beginning of whatever build they're doing. And there's still a massive roster gap from FC Dallas to these best teams. [00:39:30] Speaker A: Yeah, see, I think the thing that this game shows us or tells us is the first three games were against teams that were either real anywhere from really, really bad to they may be a playoff team in Chicago. Now you've played a legitimately good a team that's in form, playing well and probably going to end up being one of the better teams in the Western Conference. And this is the flaming bag of poop you got out of it. So I don't know where out of these four games are they this bad? In reality, are they as good as we thought maybe they were when we saw them play in Houston? Because all of the really good moments that we've seen so far in four games has very much been in spurts. I was going back and looking through all my notes in the four games and I've, I've yet to identify an extended period of time in any half of any of the four games where I was like, wow, Dallas has really found their rhythm. This is their deal. I, I just have yet to see them put that down for more than a very brief moment of nice passing between Acosta and Musa. [00:40:34] Speaker C: Well, to be fair, you know, there are four teams worse than Dallas and they have played the first place team and the fourth place team in the west and they played the sixth place team in the East. So like that is a little bit, I mean Houston's trash, but that is a little bit of a tough start schedule wise. You know, some of those teams have good results because they played Dallas on the other hand. But it could be worse. You could have one point like Sporting kc, Houston and LA Galaxy do. I imagine if you're the LA Galaxy, you just won the cup and now are one of the worst teams in the whole league. Granted, partially that's because you have Puigas. Maybe they should have put you on the IR for the year, right? But they didn't. So you know, I. It is early in the season, you know, you're going to have a series of games against some of these teams that aren't as good. You know, you're going to have a chance to make some points. I think we knew, we all talked about how bad this defense was going to be and they still have no backups. Like the right back backup is a 20 year old kid who played like 20 games in college and that's it. The center back backup is a dude that the Colorado Rapids, who are not always a great defense, let walk and that's it. There's no left back backup. The other center back is 19 and has played one game in MLS next pro and never played a first team game. The guy that is the sixth they just signed is 18, never played a first team game, so. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Oh, he played one. [00:41:49] Speaker C: I'll play one, I'm sorry. And then everyone else back in February, you know, half the roster is 18 to 20 years old and has never played hardly at all, or they're hurt. So, like, it's going to be, you know, part of rebuilding is going always going to be painful. And when you have a team that to us looks like they haven't, you remember they went into the winter, they were like, we got to fix the defense. We're going to rebuild the defense. They got rid of some dudes and then they brought in Osaze Gide. [00:42:17] Speaker B: Looks who's really great. He's been absolutely fantastic, great pickup. [00:42:21] Speaker C: But like, not like you got rid of Tafari and got him and he looks great, but is he insanely better than Tafari? So that's kind of just a straight swap sort of, or maybe a small upgrade over Tafari. The rest of it is the same and maybe it's worse because the Aramini was a great six. So it's like, I don't know what people expected out of this defense now. The offense, I think can be exciting and it has a couple of issues. The last two games that I think are solvable. And I'm going to tell you how I think they're solving against that part of the show. [00:42:51] Speaker A: Well, no, let's. Let's get to that because the question I'm having is, is this is the current situation with four points in four games, is it A byproduct of a Quill system or B, bad roster construction? [00:43:12] Speaker C: I think, I think Quill made a couple of bad choices along the way, like last game. He may own up to those choices. I think what's getting him right now is that he's focused on trying to maximize Lucho Acosta and Peter Musa. And so he's doing things to the team, to the shape and to the tactic in order to try to maximize that, and it isn't working. So he, you know, sometimes you. You try things and hoping it's going to unlock this, that and the other thing, and it doesn't really happen. So he has to make a decision about do I have ultimate faith in what I'm doing with them, which is specifically playing a Costa really high, as if he's a second striker. Right? It's a Christ Graziani. That's what we're looking at. Right. So because of that, his wings are playing deeper and deeper and deeper, and it looks more like a 4, 4, 2. Do I have ultimate faith in that system? I think the problem with that is that the two central mids aren't good enough to be by themselves in a flat four. So you then have to solve this problem. So your problem is that when you do this, your wings are now way deep in midfield, so you don't have those outside runs that are opening the defense in front of Moussa and Acosta. So that's the issue offensively. So how do you fix that? Well, one is that you either have outside wings that understand that they're going to have to be blasting up and down the field the whole game. Anderson Julio understands that and can do that. Nobody else understands that it can do that. Bernie doesn't understand it. Logan probably could understand that if you communicated it to him, but he's not that guy. He wants to be up in the middle as well. So that's part of your problem is you've lost that verticality and lost that ability to open the defense. So in order to fix that, you either have to be able to play a formation that puts those wings back high or, and thus have probably have to have Acosta come back to midfield so you don't get overloaded in midfield. So there's a couple of formations you could do to solve that problem. You know, if you're really, absolutely convinced that Acosta needs to be high, then you probably have to play a system that has a inverted front three. So you have Musa and Acosta high with somebody underneath them and. But then in order to do that, you really have to have outside backs that can run the full field. Shaq Moore can do that. Marco Farfin cannot. So again, roster construction, you don't have the wing that you need to play that way. But that probably is your best chance of unlocking Acosta Musa without sacrificing your midfield that's getting destroyed. If you brought in a, if you went to a more of a 4, 3, 3 and played Ramiro as a pure 6 and let legit be an 8, you have to find another 8. So right now maybe that would be a Pedrinho or something, I don't know. But then you would run into the same problem you would have. You would, you would run into the problem of where am I going to do with Anderson Julio? Because if you play a 4, 3, 3, you're going to have, you know, Lucho and Musa up high and then where's Anderson Julio going to play? Is he going to do that? He's the only wing and he's flip flopping side. Like it gets confusing about how you maximize these players. You know, you have to make a decision about how you're going to use Lucho Costa. You really do. Because the whole thing will change based on that. Because he's an MVP caliber player, right? So he, in a way, he's the fulcrum of the tactic. So you have to either have pure belief that he and Musa together up high is the way, or you have to understand that, like, I'm getting killed because I don't have wings. And so, Lucha, you got to come back and play in the midfield. And that's not. That's not easy, right? So finding a tactic that implies Lucho Costa has a second forward and has wing play, you know, and lets you get another body in midfield. That's. Oh, my man, that's tough. Learn. [00:47:05] Speaker A: Arman, you got a plan? You got an alternate plan? [00:47:08] Speaker B: Well, score more goals, ball go in the net, something like that. No, but the thing that Buzz, I think you kind of hit a point on is understanding that there needs to be a physical output from these players. Now there's metrics for these, right? Yeah, there's metrics that you can understand and say, hey, you know, these guys, they're good at physically going up and down, physically doing this, etc. Do we know if Dallas is looking at those metrics? I'm not sure, to be quite honest with you. If they're looking at physical metrics to say, hey, this is the output of this player, this is what they're doing, etc. Let's look at a team like San Diego, right? They're a team that has a. Has built out a pretty robust system and they're to have been together for what, like I think six, seven weeks, eight weeks together or something like that. And they seem to know exactly what everyone's doing on. On the pitch. Like there seems to be in the right positions, etc. This player knows Omega's run dryers making crazy runs. I think that's how you say his name up and down the pitch, etc. And it seems like a really well planned out roster with a well planned out system that gets everyone's things together. It seems like they kind of just threw. They got Acosta and said, okay, we're gonna get him. We're gonna figure out what to do with them later. For me, it's very. It's very difficult what. What they can do because there's a couple of kind of interesting things that they could do that I don't think they would do, but they could have Acosta as that fake winger and then have him play, play him Centrally kind of. You see what Gold does a little bit, what Messi does. Almiron is doing it quite a bit. Even though I think Atlanta is trying to make him go out wide because him and Moranchuk are occupying the same positions now. If you saw last game they actually had him occupy, try to occupy more out wide, bring out defenders and that's how they rose, get that goal, that early goal, exposing that back line and having someone else in the midfield because they need someone to advance the ball up the field to Acosta or and this is more of just embracing this whole play it forward thing. Use Petter Musa's aerial ability to win balls, win those balls high up the pitch, force the defense to respect you. If you don't have the best passers, play direct, just go all out and but then it goes back to the point of do you have the players that can have the physical output for a system that is a little bit more direct, high pressing, etc? I don't Again, I'm not exactly. Because Eric Quill talks talks about on go forward etc quickly all this and then he talks about hey I also want to have spells of possession etc. It's kind of hard to do both and you kind of can see that the teams that play possession aren't necessarily super direct and the teams that don't play possession are more direct. So what's that balance that Eric Will is trying to find? I'm trying to think of solutions but Buzz, you keep bringing up the roster and it's very hard to figure out these solutions with the roster. And now you spent 4 million on a, on a, on a U22 6 in Kaik. Now that guy, you're putting a lot of pressure on that guy to be the one of the solutions in this situation which I don't know how much resolution he can be. [00:50:05] Speaker C: So given the current roster, let's try and come up with a way to make to solve all these problems. Right. You still want Musa and Akasi relatively high. The answer is that you have to sacrifice Logan Farrington from the starting lineup. So you're going to play a. My suggestion is to play a 433 single pivot which Quill doesn't like to do, but play a single pivot because Romero will bust his tail and run, run, run, run, run, run, run. And that allows legit to play 10 yards higher and then you have to bring in an eight. You got to either bring in Delgado or seeking Sabbling or my man Diego Garcia. One of those three guys has to play alongside legit as a double eight system and then you leave Musa and. And Hosta high. And then Anderson Julio Costa is a. In this case as you mentioned, Armand is a false wing or a second striker or a 10. And then Anderson Julio comes off of whichever wing he wants and he spends the game sort of flip flopping and trying to attack when he's on the left. More releases which more is perfectly capable of doing. You can run more into the ground because you've got like Newman you can bring in on the bench, off the bench and then he does the same thing. He flips to the right and then you have far fan. You give him this chance to get forward some. So it'll. It'll be more lopsided with Julio left than right. But I think that's the way you do it. If you want to have a Costa high, that's the way only way you can do it is to get an extra body in midfield and sacrifice Logan. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Ferns man Buzz, I gotta say Romero is a single pivot sounds I know this team will give up a thousand goals because he is not a. He is not a standalone holding mid. He's not fast enough or physical enough to. To chew up and defend cover a back four by himself. [00:51:49] Speaker C: Here's the idea that, that understand that Quill's not a team that holds possession for a long time. They could. They counter press quickly but then they drop and as they drop the two eights now settle in and you're playing with three triple pivot. Playing with three across in your defensive stance all the time. You're never going to try and leave Ramiro on an island by himself. But when you're building forward, he can be, he can sit there. And now you're releasing two eights and you're releasing Julio and you're releasing one of the outside backs, whatever's opposite of arson, Julio. So it's not a, it's a miss. It's an unbalanced four, three, three. And yes, absolutely. In that current setup, Ramiro is the worry. But Cafe Mono's hurt, Paxton's hurt. Kaik is 18 and just 19 just got here. Yeah, right. Nolan, put Noah Norris in there. I'm. I'm excited. Start Nolan Norris. But Eric will so far has not shown a willingness to play Norris well. [00:52:43] Speaker A: But he did say in his press conference guys who don't have a lot of minutes now he kind of hinted at this idea that he's twice desperate to do that. Yeah, he did. [00:52:52] Speaker C: He brought it up twice that like if you haven't Played much, Now's your chance. And then specifically in the question I asked him, he specifically said it again that maybe now's the time so, you know, we'll see what happens when he actually gets out there. But Quill's not a guy that changes the system much. So I would bet on 4. 2. If I was going to bet, I would bet on 4231. [00:53:14] Speaker A: But still, yeah, a lot of eyes are on Quill. And whether this is fair or not, I am going to bring this up because it's something that I have a feeling is going to come up repeatedly over the course of the season, which is MLS 2025 featured 10 new managers and of the 10, Quill has the worst record of them all. Minus Robin Frazier in Toronto, Austin, Philly, San Jose, Miami, Vancouver, Atlanta, NYC FC and St. Louis. All have collected more points. Most of them several more points. Atlanta I think is tied at 6 along with Austin. And it's just something to keep an eye on because there were a lot of managers available out in the market. Dallas ended up with Eric Quill and I just wonder as we move through the season how much that's going to become a talking. [00:54:06] Speaker C: Yeah, Atlanta's on four. They have four. [00:54:10] Speaker A: Yeah, they're tied with Dallas at four. [00:54:12] Speaker C: Yeah, Orlando's only got four points. I mean we all got faith in Poppy, but you know, there's. [00:54:18] Speaker A: Well, I'm talking about teams that replace their manager. That's my point here that you know, we talk about, you know, Philly and Miami's probably not a fair one, but the guy that they took over, Vancouver, maybe, you know, there's. We'll just have to keep an eye on that. [00:54:36] Speaker B: And I mean, I think like to be fair to Quill, this is his first, first division job. Like, like we have to get like, like. Yeah, we have to, we have to. I mean that's, that's, that sounds like a broken record every time we say that. Right. But you have to keep expectations in line like with that and it's going to come with the growing pains. Like, like from what we saw the week before where I know you, the talking point on you on, on the pod was what's going to happen if something worse happens, like reaction wise from there. And now it's okay. How you're gonna adjust, how you're gonna adjust to this. To me you're, to me you're kind of seeing what a first year coach is going to bring you. Yeah, it's going to come with growing pains. It's going to come with. [00:55:22] Speaker C: At least he coached a team of professionals before, unlike the previous two coaches. [00:55:25] Speaker A: Yay. We hired the most experienced. Least experienced guy. [00:55:30] Speaker C: Yeah. It's FC Dallas. Come on. You know. [00:55:32] Speaker A: I know. [00:55:33] Speaker C: Predicted back in April. [00:55:34] Speaker A: All right, so now. Now they have to travel to Salt Lake, who are just a couple of points ahead. Good news for Dallas. Diego Luna will be with the national team and they won't have to face the young tattooed kid. But in the bad side, they've also lost their goalkeeper. And now we'll have to go to war with one of two very inexperienced goalkeepers. Buzz. [00:55:58] Speaker C: Yeah. RSL also is missing Dominic Marzook, Mark Zook. So that's a loss for them too. Yeah. FCDOs. Good Lord. Martin pauses out. And we have to go with either Michael Collodi or Antonio Carrera, obviously, since they've put Collode in North Texas for two straight games in order to get him ready. That. That's the answer. And he was. And he's still on the bench as the second guy. [00:56:21] Speaker A: How do you. Okay, Buzz, you're very intimately. That's not the right word. You're very familiar with both these guys. [00:56:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:30] Speaker A: I have yet to figure out from you which one you prefer to be this backup for Dallas for the senior team. [00:56:38] Speaker C: I don't know that I have a preference. One of them is a better long term prospect than the other, but one of them is much more experienced and much more. [00:56:46] Speaker A: Buzz, I'm holding a gun to your head for Saturday. Who is the one that you think should start in this game? [00:56:51] Speaker C: It's going to be Collodi. And it should be Collodi. [00:56:53] Speaker A: Okay. [00:56:55] Speaker C: The Carrera is capable of immense performances and humongous games. But right now it's clearly Collodi. He. He's a better pure shot stopper. You know, he's a good manager, good leader. His feet are pretty good. Better than pauses, you know. But he's not going to have pauses. Side to side athleticism. And he's only six feet tall instead of being six three. And you may think that doesn't matter, but it does matter. There are shots that a guy is only 6ft tall. Your fingers are 2 inches short of reaching the ball because you're only 6ft tall. Like I think Collode can play in this league for 15 years. I do. But he's not going to be a number one for that whole time. You know, he's. It's just not how it works. So. You know, Nick Ramonda is a generational player that's very Uncommon and cool. He doesn't have that level of athleticism. So, you know, he's 24, Antonio's 22 and has only played for like up to the U20 national team. And Cody's played, you know, literally hundreds of college games. So it'll be clothing. [00:58:00] Speaker A: So knowing what we've seen so far, knowing that Quill has hinted at players with not a lot of minutes, what do you anticipate or what do you think the 11 will be? [00:58:09] Speaker C: Well, I. Unlike my discussion of how I think you actually make the team better, I don't think he'll change tactics. I think Quill is reluctant to switch up his system. Like once he starts in on a system, he tends to stick with it. I've been thinking back to the years I've watched him coach North Texas and he was pretty locked in on what he wanted to do. Now there were seasons where they played more before 3, 3 for sure. Because a lot of that was. Some of that was when Oscar was around, but at the same time and Lucci was around, who was also a pure 433 guy. But I think he'll stick with 4231. So the question is, does he have a. Where these weaknesses are? Is there anyone who could come in across the back line that can help? And the only person that you have that could actually help would be perhaps Newman, maybe even on the left because then you would have a guy who could get forward athletically and aggressively and offensively. I putting in Abubakar only would be like as a gesture of you were so bad you're going to sit a game. And I don't know if Ibiaga. You can do that to Ibiaga because he's in a lot of ways he's kind of your captain unofficially if you get into the midfield, show's not showcap him on is not in training yet. He's hurt still and Paxton's obviously still hurt. The. The Kaik just got here this week, we're told. We saw his picture today. So he's here. So like you have to ask yourself, can you put Nolan in for Romero? I can. But don't forget also that Nolan just left for a U20 camp. So Nolan's not an option this week. Nolan Norris is not. He's gone. So the only other body you have in midfield is Diego Garcia, who maybe you could bring on for legit. But Diego's not a six. Or Anthony Ramirez, who is also not a six. I think he's. And I think Diego will Be a better eight than Anthony at this point. Do you play Delgado back there that deep like they did some late in game? Delgado was a nightmare against Chicago. So do you reward him with a start? I don't think so. Padrinha was not very good in this game. So do you start him? So like I don't really see honestly, unless you know Newman, maybe you're bumming me out, Buzz. I know like who is there? It's like I cool said, oh, if you haven't played, here's your chance, man. Who. Yeah, it's like there's not. [01:00:32] Speaker B: Is Siki gonna get a moment seeky. [01:00:34] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe put in start seeky for legit. Maybe. You know, because you're not done. You're not dumping Anderson Julio. He's gonna be in. You're not dumping Lucha Acosta. You're not dumping Peter Musa. Maybe you try somebody else other than Farrington, but Farrington's played pretty well. So like maybe you take him off to get another midfielder like I suggested, but I don't think Will's going to do that. So Farrington would be back on with. With Anderson Julio. So really, it's just. Does he have the. Is he so disgusted that Abubakar gets a start? Somebody like a Garcia or a Delgado gets a start? I mean that's really seeking. Seeking would be the guy that's probably your best bet. And the seeking over legit get you much or seek you. Maybe it's. Maybe you go back to preseason and do a Siki legit double like you did in preseason when you thought the team looked pretty good. Maybe you try that. I don't. [01:01:31] Speaker A: What's your hair brained idea, Armin? [01:01:34] Speaker B: I mean, you're gonna sell Anderson Julio back in the lineup. I don't. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Against his former team. [01:01:39] Speaker B: Yep. Revenge game. You hope to. [01:01:41] Speaker A: Well, does anybody know if he's actually going to be back? Because he's looking for his green card. [01:01:46] Speaker C: Oh, that is a fair point. [01:01:48] Speaker B: I have no idea. [01:01:50] Speaker C: Sometimes. Because we'll discuss how that works. You know this, Peter, when you go to get your green card, or just like you do when you go to get your Visa, you go and you have a meeting and they go check all your paperwork and you dot all the eyes and they go, okay, we'll call you. And then you sit there and you wait and depending on how it goes. [01:02:08] Speaker A: Did he have to go. Did he have to go back to his home country? [01:02:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:11] Speaker A: Okay. [01:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah. So he's in. Christ. Where is he? [01:02:16] Speaker A: Insert home country here. [01:02:17] Speaker C: Yeah. It's amazing. I don't remember. He had to go back home. So sometimes it takes two weeks or weak, sometimes it can take me. There are horror stories where guys have gotten stuck. There was a FC Dallas had a trainer once who went home over the holidays and when it came time to come back to the United States, they, they. His visa got denied and he never came back. He never worked for the team again. Yeah, I mean they lost a great trainer. Yeah, he just, they lost him, you know, and it was. Stranger things have happened. So like we assume Anderson, who they'll be back, but we don't actually know that he'll be back. It's entirely possible that he won't be back. That has happened for sure. Usually I would say that green cards of eases take two weeks to get picked up, but sometimes they've been a week and sometimes they've been longer. So entirely possible. It's an excellent point you make that it may not, he may not be. [01:03:10] Speaker A: Back after this week. Just for everybody, heads up. They've got a home game against Kansas City and then a road game in Atlanta and then a home game versus to Seattle as they enter into the month of April. So just. [01:03:24] Speaker C: There you go. [01:03:25] Speaker A: All right. [01:03:26] Speaker C: Well, you know RSL and Kansas City are both near nearish to them in the standings. So is Atlanta, so Seattle. So those are theoretically teams you're on par with. [01:03:36] Speaker A: And by the way, we should mention on a sad note, Paul Areola officially with the torn ACL he suffered during Champions Cup. That is a sad turn of events for Paul who not only had to leave teams now has torn as ACL and I took a pay cut to do all this, so I guess he would have gotten paid eventually. [01:03:57] Speaker C: Oh, he's getting his money. Yeah. [01:04:00] Speaker A: So we feel terrible for you, Paul. That's a really crummy way for your season to go. So there you go. Okay. Anything else about Dallas Buzz or Armin you wanted to bring up? Any stats or points or thoughts or observations? [01:04:16] Speaker C: Well, we probably bummed everybody out, but it's, you know, it's all Armin's fault. [01:04:20] Speaker A: It's him on this. [01:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I'm the ray of sunshine. I'm the. Yeah, I mean, look, it's just gonna be interesting to see how I think Quill wants to set up the team and I would be again, I kind of call us the non reaction zone where we just have to keep calm. But we're entering the reaction zone set for five games. So this will be the game where you kind of figure out what like how a team is looking, Etc. But one thing that, you know, I see a lot of people always kind of point this Colorado game. And again, I kind of want to emphasize like the more you look at Colorado and the way they've been playing, etc. It that Colorado, that Colorado team seems like a team that's going to be kind of. I kind of coined that Dallas be more chaotic. I was wrong. It's more Colorado that forces teams to play like this. Etc. So I'd be careful taking too much stock into that Colorado game and kind of look around for the more full body of work and I think we'll get a really good idea going after this RSL game. Okay, where's this team lie? Etc. And I think, I mean looking at the schedule ahead, don't want to get too ahead. But that game against SKC, I mean, I know they came back down 3, 0, but I mean that was a bizarre comeback to say the least. That game will be a point where I think we'll really see. Okay, how is Dallas standing up? Because SKC is looking really rough to start the year. Like really rough. And that would be kind of like either a get right game for Dallas or kind of like, oh, what exactly is going on here? [01:05:42] Speaker C: The only other thing I would say about Dallas is that they're definitely still are missing two basic fundamental roster pieces. They're missing a center back, there should be five and they're missing a left back. So it's like this window runs through the end of next month. So they really should. They have one open roster spot for sure and they could make room if they wanted to add somebody else. So like they, they're, they should be like Quill should be in there every day knocking on the offensive as TD and his, and his soccer ops guy and saying like, hey, where's my new center back? Where's my left back? You know, there should be. [01:06:17] Speaker A: Well, I get buzz. Do you think, do you think they're actually going to add more to the roster at this point? I see. I think my impression is they're done at least until the summer window. [01:06:25] Speaker C: No, I think they'll add one more player. I don't know how they'll do it. I think they'll add a player. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Really? [01:06:31] Speaker C: Yeah, because they, they talked about that like, well, maybe Kaik was it. [01:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah, see, I was under the impression Kaik was it, but I'm just looking. [01:06:40] Speaker C: At the basic roster construction. They're short of center back. So, you know, I mean they've been. [01:06:45] Speaker A: They'Ve been Short of center back for a couple years. [01:06:48] Speaker C: Well, they've always had five though and now they only have four. So they were model. [01:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. [01:06:54] Speaker C: There's always five. [01:06:56] Speaker A: All right, Saturday, 8:30 in Salt Lake. Let's see how it goes. Hopefully it is better. Trinity FC had a really weird week. Coming off beating league leading, Brooklyn whipping them six nothing. They had a game in Lexington rescheduled for an earlier time on the day. Was it Saturday? Yeah, Saturday. [01:07:18] Speaker C: Yeah. They moved it up to 11 first. [01:07:19] Speaker A: And then the league decided and I actually know this, I was talking to somebody from the team earlier today. It turns out that they. Their flight was supposed to get into Lexington late Friday night and so they were prepared. It was the league that decided not to. The league decided, well, there's not enough time. That's player safety. 12 hours isn't enough and that's why the game got rescheduled. [01:07:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I appreciate on blood protecting players. That's good. [01:07:48] Speaker A: That seems soft. I mean NBA players just arrive at three in the morning and play at noon the next day and then sit. [01:07:56] Speaker C: The game out, take a game off. Yeah. Well funny enough though, that means that Trinity now has to go to Brooklyn and play at Brooklyn. [01:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:06] Speaker C: So they're going to get a home and away with Brooklyn and Brooklyn will be gunning for him after losing six nothing. [01:08:11] Speaker A: But yeah, Brooklyn still has Brooklyn won yet since the second half of the season. [01:08:16] Speaker C: I didn't look this weekend to see if they did, but yeah, it look that Dallas throttled them so like they're going to feel really good. The trick is to not get complacent. You know, like I thought it looked really nice with lan Lancaster was Cameron Lasser was a really great addition up top. You know they inverted that. They, they did. They did what Quill needs to do which is like the, they, they, they flipped their front line to turn m into a 10 underneath two strikers. Now they're playing a back threes. Maybe you don't want to do that, but maybe you do. Maybe the 352 is the way to go because that's what Trinity sort of Trinity heaven playing three four, three and they switched it and it really worked for him. So that that Misimo Lancaster combo was really on fire and that really freed up Thornton too against and they that put Uber Gogu back as a left wing back but she thrived running people from that deep. Brooks is back in midfield. You know the Abadoon did a nice job in there next to Brooks. So like you know some of the pieces they've added look pretty good and they may have really found some magic going forward. I mean, they look much better than they looked all season. And the last time before that they played Brooklyn. Brooklyn killed them. And they turned the tables on them and they flattened them. So this is a huge test. Go on the road again where you got smoked by Brooklyn last time. See if you can turn the tables on. So big game. [01:09:36] Speaker A: Herman, are you into Trinity? [01:09:38] Speaker C: He's wearing a Trinity shirt. [01:09:40] Speaker B: I'm wearing a Trinity shirt right now. [01:09:41] Speaker A: I can't see it behind your. Oh, there it is. Okay. It was hidden behind your microphone. [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's. It's hidden. No, I mean Dallas, I mean, from the first half of the season, I think they were the highest. Your second or highest expected goal difference in the USL Super League. Yeah, they have status for USL Super League, which surprised me. Shout out American Soccer Analysis. Brooklyn was super hot. And then what ended up happening was, I guess with the long break and everything, it's kind of flipped on its head a little bit. But I was at the. I was at the game when they played Tampa Bay and that was. They were kind of trying to figure it out. It looked like, to a degree, offensively trying to get. Trying to figure out a way to get Misimo involved, but it looked way better. Once again, like Buzz said, once they flipped the system and obviously destroyed Brooklyn six. So I mean they. But they beat Lexington six zero last in the fall season, I think too, or six two or something like ridiculous like that. But one thing I wanted to add, there's actually a little North Texas Brooklyn FC connection. So on the Brooklyn FC coaching staff, there is a Johan Arami. He is the assistant assistant coach there. He used to be North Texas video analysis before becoming Brooklyn FC's assistant coaches. [01:10:55] Speaker A: So there's some. A little insider information from. [01:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah, a little, A little, A little, A little connection there. But. But no, I mean it's a big. It's a big game for Trinity against another measuring stick. Des. And I think all these games matter, especially going into kind of. That's a home stretch. [01:11:09] Speaker C: But Peter, to answer your question, in fact, Brooklyn's last win came back in December. [01:11:14] Speaker A: That's what I thought. Okay. I didn't know if they had won last weekend. That's what I was curious. [01:11:17] Speaker C: That December win was one nothing over Dallas Trinity. [01:11:20] Speaker A: So they lost after they played Dallas too. [01:11:23] Speaker C: Yeah, that was that. Yeah, they. Their games since then are. Was tie, tie, loss, loss. They lost to Fort Lauderdale two nothing. [01:11:33] Speaker A: Wow. [01:11:34] Speaker C: Yesterday. [01:11:34] Speaker A: That is weird. [01:11:35] Speaker C: Or two days Saturday. [01:11:36] Speaker A: That Team was smoking and Buzz and Dan said they really didn't have a lot of changes to the team and they're on a winless streak. Okay, Buzz, were you there Friday for North Texas? Three, two, win. [01:11:47] Speaker C: I watched it on tv. I did not go because of the. That was the dust storm day when all the. All the. And if you watched it on tv, it was like playing in a sandstorm. I felt bad for those guys. But they did win. They won 3, 2. There's not a whole lot of takeaways from that. Except that right now Sam Sarver is probably their best player and he knows it and he is not afraid to tell everybody that he is. We'll have to keep an eye on that. The. The part FC Dallas fans will care about is Alvo Augusto started and looked pretty dang solid. Mo Cise, who's the Penn State kid? The left back does not look that great. But the. The Portuguese kid, a ghost. It looks real. So that was exciting. I mean, he needs a season down there or half a season or something, but that was a pretty good first to play display on his part. Other than that, there's a bunch of kids rotating and now they sent down, you know, Diego Garcias and Tariqs. And what's important to talk about in this context is they played on Friday and that's actually really bad playing on Friday because they have to determine their lineup based on what FC Dallas is going to do. So like you can't, like if you play on Sunday, FC Dallas plays and if guys don't get in, they go play for North Texas. So you can't do that. If they play on Friday, you have to assume that I can't play Diego Garcia, I can't play Tarek Scott, I can't play Anthony Ramirez because I might need them. They might need to come off the bench on Saturday. I can't play him 90 minutes on Friday and then have him be there on Saturday. So playing on Friday is really bad. They need to stop, get that out of there and play on Saturday or Sunday, you know, Saturday after we even SC Dallas. But more importantly, play on Sundays, you know, or, or because otherwise you're really handcuffing yourself in terms of like your usability for those guys that are the bounce between kind of guys. But anyway, Dynamo dose next for them. That'll be a fun game. Always a rivalry game. So good, good win for Gall that he won a game. [01:13:39] Speaker A: And the big thing happening this particular week, in fact it's tomorrow recording this on Monday. So Tuesday is The debut of our new USL 1 team, Texoma. And they are debuting. I was talking about this on the show Saturday. I still think this is really cool. The club's very first game is a US Open cup game and they're playing against 4o which we all know is the local amateur side that just won the state amateur tournament and now has announced they themselves are playing in the new league of clubs. League. [01:14:12] Speaker C: League for clubs. Yeah. So they, they're making what I consider to be a move up to a level that is comparative to Denton Diablos and Chupacabras and Vaqueros. This is the same level as NPSL USL 2. So they're becoming effectively that summer team for college kids. Now you can play in those leagues and not use that model. You don't have to use the college kids. You can use your own kids or you can use semi pro kids or whatever. Particularly in that league for clubs. So like they're moving up in my opinion from USL upsl. Somebody from UPSL might claim it's the same level, but I don't think it is. So you know this for example is FC Dallas has a team in UPSL. They, their academy U18 team also fields a team because they have so many players. They fill the team in UPSL as well. So they have, they effectively are in two leagues at the same time. The U18 team is the league that Foro is joining is the league where Dallas is going to field a U23 team. So different level to me. So that's fascinating step move by Foro sort of proclaim themselves as we've been the best amateur team in the state for three or four years now we're going to come up a level and we're going to see where are they. [01:15:23] Speaker A: Going to play their games. Do we know? [01:15:25] Speaker C: It did not say in the information that came out from the league from clubs. So right now they play at a high school. I think Dan always knows what which one it is. I don't remember. [01:15:33] Speaker A: All right, well this game is at 7:00 on Tuesday and they are playing it up at Bearcat Stadium up in Sherman which is Texoma Stadium. So congratulations them. I saw somebody post an actual. Somebody got their very, their very own Texoma jersey the other day and posted a picture of it in your discord and it was. It's nice. I dig it. [01:15:53] Speaker C: Looks good. Yeah, it's a good looking jersey for sure. [01:15:55] Speaker A: All right. [01:15:56] Speaker C: It's better than all of his jersey except maybe North Texas is new away one which is really good. [01:16:03] Speaker A: All Right, let's see. Let me look through the run sheet. Is there any more red crayon on here? It does not appear that there is. Armand, you're a special guest. Is there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't throw on the list? [01:16:15] Speaker B: Well, Nations League is this week as well. [01:16:17] Speaker A: That's right. [01:16:18] Speaker C: With. [01:16:18] Speaker B: Yep. With some big names. I mean usa, Panama and Canada. Mexico, which I'm really excited for. I mean I think that game is going to be an absolutely fantastic affair. I mean if it was funny, I was talking to Daniel Robertson today and he was like the betting odds between Mexico and Canada are super close. Like it could go like that's, that's normal. You don't see that. You normally see Mexico super dominant over, over Canada, etc. So super excited to see that. Super excited to see what role Tanner Testman has with his national team. I think he's been super. Someone pointed out on Discord, but he's been playing quite a bit for Leon. And you know, right now I think, and I think they just said that Johnny Cardoso isn't traveling. So Jack McGlynn's actually replacing him with the in the national team. So I wonder if that opens up even more of a spot for Terrence Hessman to have an opportunity to play and uh, you know, show out. I mean it's pretty cool to see a guy from another guy from the academy make a. I was an impact. [01:17:18] Speaker A: I had this. I had this. What's the word? I had this epiphany last week on Thursday when the, the games finished in the Europa League. That Tanner Testman, a kid that I watched Buzz, watched way more than I did in the academy. [01:17:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:17:33] Speaker A: Is now going to end up playing in a European quarterfinal two leg knockout competition against my Manchester United in the beginning of April on the 3rd and 10th. [01:17:45] Speaker C: Isn't it a small world? [01:17:46] Speaker A: Isn't that crazy? See Armin, here's the thing. You won't get this but there was a time in a day where Buzz and I used to get all geeked out about Jeff Agus playing somewhere overseas. [01:17:56] Speaker B: Or J.J. pierce's finest. [01:17:59] Speaker A: I mean, or just name any kind of random, you know, American playing anywhere in Europe was like a big deal to us and now it's so common. [01:18:09] Speaker C: Was in Germany. [01:18:10] Speaker A: Yeah, right, exactly. I mean, I mean there's a whole list of. No, it's not a whole list. It's a short list of American players that were finding themselves over in opportunities in Europe. And now it's so ubiquitous. Everybody looks at Me, like, I'm crazy when I go a little goofy about Tanner Testman playing against Manchester United in the Europa League quarterfinal. And I like, you just don't get it. This was never anything I ever thought I'd ever see in my lifetime. So it's very cool. [01:18:36] Speaker C: And they wonder why tarps gave us the shakes, right? [01:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we started with tarps giving us the shakes and we end with Tanner Testman being cool. [01:18:45] Speaker C: No, I have a shout out. I have a shout out, but go ahead. [01:18:48] Speaker B: I have one. I have a funny story about Jeff Egus. So I was doing a story with. Who was it like pro soccer, you're saying about the whole MLS skills challenge. So I sat down with Jeff Agus and he was like, he. We were talking. I was like, oh, go to school at UTD. And he was like, oh, I went to J.J. pierce. And he's like, is that Whataburger still there on that corner of. I think it was like, like Coyton Campbell or something like that. I was like, yeah. He's like, yeah, I used to go there quite a bit. I'm like, damn, this is so random. I'm talking to Jeff Egus about Richardson, Texas. Out of all. [01:19:16] Speaker A: Were you. Were you hypnotized by his calves? [01:19:19] Speaker B: He was wearing long pants, so I couldn't. I. I couldn't be hypnotized. [01:19:23] Speaker A: Most massive cabs I've ever seen on a human being in my life. Jeff a goose. True, true story. His cabs were bigger than my. Than my thighs. It was ridiculous. [01:19:33] Speaker C: All right, here's my shout out. You ready? Peter, does the name Roman Torres from SC Dallas do anything for you? [01:19:39] Speaker A: I know the name. Yeah? [01:19:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, so Roman Torres is the kid. This is my favorite, like, pathway to be in a pro story ever. He's the kid who had that amazing Dallas cup for the SCL ECNL team where he scored like five or six game winning goals. Have that crazy run. He went to Germany, to the 6th Division in Germany, and then he came back to the United States and he played for like Tulsa Athletic and like a USL team and he ended up getting himself into Creighton and played for Creighton for a season or so or two. By now he's like already 22 or whatever. So he got drafted by Minnesota this year. The Minnesota United, really Off of his great job at Creighton. Yep. And they signed him to Minnesota too. And they now have loaned him to Birmingham Legion, which is a USL championship team. They've played two games. He has two starts and two Assists. [01:20:32] Speaker A: Wow. [01:20:32] Speaker C: So ecnl Roman Torres, who was a kid who had that amazing Dallas cup run, we were like, why is this kid not in the academy? And he got called into North Texas. You remember that? He played some games. North Texas never played in the academy. And he had the craziest pathway of all time. Now is two games, two assists for Birmingham Legion, and he's signed to Minnesota's second team, technically as on loan. So I just love this kid. I've never met him. I just love this story and I love that this scrawny little 10 Roman Torres, who never got a fair shake, is just fought and fought and fought and fought and it's still now. And he's 22 years old now and he's doing great things and I think it's awesome. [01:21:11] Speaker A: That's pretty great. Thank you for sharing that bus. [01:21:14] Speaker C: Third Degree, the podcast is brought to you by listeners like you. If you enjoy this podcast, if you enjoy our [email protected] or any of the social social medias, why not join us at patreon.com third degree and give us some support? If you join at the Three Amigos level, you can join our wonderful discord and the fantastic community we've joined there. As always, thanks for your support and on with the podcast. [01:21:35] Speaker A: All right, very good. Well, Armin, thanks for filling in today. You did a very good job. I'm sure we're going to get nothing but stellar reviews. I try on this episode simply because you're here. [01:21:44] Speaker B: Never played Dan, but I try. I try. [01:21:47] Speaker A: It's okay. We're all different. We all have our skill sets. You have yours. [01:21:52] Speaker B: Depends. [01:21:53] Speaker A: Thanks, man. I appreciate you being here. [01:21:55] Speaker B: Anytime. [01:21:56] Speaker A: All right, Buzz. Very good. Congratulations once again. I'm super happy for you. Newcastle dude. [01:22:01] Speaker C: Altitude. [01:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that too. [01:22:04] Speaker C: Yep. [01:22:05] Speaker A: All right, very good. And thank you, FC Dallas Curious fan. Hold on tight, everybody. Stick together. It's all going to to be okay. We're only four games into this thing. Long road to go. Don't worry about it. We got Lucho Acosta. What do we got to worry about? And we will speak to you next week on another episode of Third Degree the podcast. [01:22:25] Speaker C: Dan, hurry up. [01:22:27] Speaker A: Third Degree the Third Degree N Podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree Podcast. Third Degree Nap, I guess. Third Degree Third Degree N.