3rd Degree the Podcast #319

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Third Degree, the Third Degree Nep podcast. Third Degree, the Third Degree N Podcast. Third degree, the Third degree N Podcast. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Third Degree, the Third Degree Nerd Podcast. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Well, hello there, DFW soccer curious person. You welcome to another episode of Third degree the podcast. I'm not even sure what he's doing today. It could be only Dan's. It could be work. It could be both of those things. It could be beard trimming. It could be having a nice meal with his lovely wife. I don't know. But Dan is not here today. But in his stead is our other good friend, my Persian angel. [00:00:55] Speaker B: I haven't heard that ever. [00:00:57] Speaker A: Welcome Armin. Thanks for showing up for the show today. [00:01:00] Speaker C: Of course, anytime. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Armin reached out to Buzz and I and said he kind of like shoved us against the digital wall and said, I want to come on the podcast and rant about why FC Dallas isn't rebuilding. [00:01:14] Speaker C: I mean, it's true, but maybe, maybe not the shoving part. Yeah, I think Buzz would kick my ass. [00:01:20] Speaker A: It seemed pretty. It seemed pretty serious and insistent. But we'll get to that part. And somewhere on his now annual walkabout slash drive around the country in his car by himself for two weeks, it is the editor, founder of thirddegree.net and the original soccer influencer himself, Buzz Carrick. Where are you, Buzz? [00:01:44] Speaker B: Socuro, New Mexico. Basically halfway across the state. [00:01:48] Speaker A: All right. [00:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Halfway across the other state, New Mexico. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I did 10 hours today, so. Knocked out. [00:01:54] Speaker A: 10 hours of driving. [00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah. What's the, what's the weirdest thing you spotted today on your 10 hour drive? [00:02:01] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. Weird. Off top of my head, nothing weird is coming to me. So I'll. Let me think about it. If it comes to me, I'll tell you later in the podcast something weird. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Did you drive by a Buc EE's and go, why in the hell are people insane about a gas station? [00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I always think that. So I don't, I don't. I don't know why people are in Santa. [00:02:22] Speaker A: True secret ermine. I've never been inside a BUC EE's. [00:02:26] Speaker C: That's BS. [00:02:27] Speaker A: True story. [00:02:28] Speaker C: Serious. [00:02:28] Speaker A: Never been into. No. Why would I want to go stand and sit in a car line to get into a gas station? I don't need car line. [00:02:36] Speaker C: I've never sat there a car line and go to Bucky's. [00:02:38] Speaker A: Oh, man, I saw two of them on the way back from Houston just a couple of weeks ago. [00:02:42] Speaker C: Like, I, I usually just park and then I'll just walk in and Then I'll use the restroom because they're pretty clean, grab some whatever BS Bucky's thing I can get, and then walk back to my car. So. I mean, there's no line. [00:02:55] Speaker A: You seem like the kind of guy that would actually buy a bag of beaver nuggets. [00:02:59] Speaker C: I actually bought a beaver plush, so I guess I might be a little on brand. And my dog took it and now it's his toys, so. [00:03:08] Speaker A: So many jokes. Too many. But this is a family podcast, so. And Doc is listening, so I won't. I won't go there. All right, Buzz, well, I hope you're. How long are you on this road trip for? [00:03:24] Speaker B: 3 weeks. [00:03:26] Speaker A: Wow. And of course, as always, when Buzz hits the road and leaves town, stuff with FC Dallas happens. And it did. Today we'll start off with the. The long standing worst kept secret ever is that the team was trying to move Leo Chu and they have officially done that now. They have sold him, given him away, traded him for some Portuguese dinerwear. What? [00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, none of it's official, but it's been confirmed by multiple reporters, so. I mean, that's not the same as official, though. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Oh, I thought. I thought if. I thought we. I thought you reposted something official. [00:04:02] Speaker B: No, no, just a confirmation of it from a second reporter saying it's happening. [00:04:07] Speaker A: Ah, okay. [00:04:09] Speaker B: You know, no, I would imagine that the price is going to be a bag of beans because, you know, his contract's running out at the end of the season, so there's not a lot of value left on the bones. The value for Dallas is the opening of the U22 spot, the opening of the salary cap hit, which is not dramatic because it is a U22 spot, but it does allow them flexibility to either bring in another young kid or switch to the 3Dp model if they would like to. And Armand can explain more about that later in a little bit perhaps. But, you know, chew. You know, walked into this team, walked into this club, and finished last in the beep test. That's not good. Not. Not when you're playing for a coach like Eric Quill, who demands a certain amount of. On the physical side more than some other coaches might. So, you know, he was riding the doghouse from day one and probably knew his days were not never numbered in the first place when he got here, because really he was just a balance sheet acquisition for the. The trade he was involved in. So I was. [00:05:06] Speaker A: I was thinking about this. Is this the most. Please just take this guy off our hands for Nothing. Sale since McRease Marquis, Pedro, when they sold him to D.C. united for like less than what some people make a year in salary. [00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's. There's been other guys too, that they sort of have just, you know, said thanks, no thanks, or, you know, gave us anything you can. So I. Yeah, the guy you're talking about, the Brazilian left back that was the replacement for Nadia Alkov, if I remember correctly, was the. Is. It was definitely a guy that they didn't think so highly of. So it definitely is a player that got on the wrong side of the coach and definitely was a player that they had planned all along to get rid of eventually. So, you know, it does give them even more flexibility in terms of doing stuff this summer if they can actually find some people that are worth bringing in. And that's always the key. [00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah, the window looms and hopefully there are some plans, but I'm sure we'll talk about that here in a little bit. All right, so let's just look. It was a three game homestand that ended with the July 4th game against Minnesota. Obviously it ended in a loss. Zero points out of three games in a home game stand one win at home, I think. What are they, one eight and two now, Buzz? [00:06:30] Speaker B: I believe that's correct off top of. [00:06:31] Speaker A: My head, which is insanely poor. And I. Look, it was just. It was just more of the same and I don't know how to. I don't know what to. I don't know how to get into this without feeling like we're just doing episode 318 and 317 all over again. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Well, what I would say about it is that, you know, there's a couple of takeaways that really matter in this particular game that make it slightly different from other games. And one is the. The resurfacing of what has happened, you know, one or two times of late, which is the mental breakdown in the back. It's not so much like bad play across the board. It's these moments of madness, if you will, this moments of breakdown which. Which can be a sign of being tired or it can be a sign of give up. So those are tiny bit concerning. And the flatness of the first half is another sign of give up. That was a little bit concerning. Then Farrington scored, of course, and everyone got excited and started attacking again. It was very different. The next takeaway is that they played a team that plays in broad sense the same way that they want to play, which is to sit deep and not really have the ball. And Minnesota did a better job of sitting deep and not having the ball than S.C. dallas did. And so Dallas had more of the ball and they didn't know what to do. They didn't really know how to break down that defense. They didn't really have any strong ideas about how to attack that team. And they just were bereft of many good chances. And Minnesota, despite having less of the ball, had, you know, 14 or 15 shots at halftime. And I wrote about this in my, in my breakdown that it was, it was stunning that how poorly I thought Kaik played and how much better Ramiro played when he came in like 15 of the 16 shots on FB ref that Minnesota had came before that change. So sure, at that point they're leading to nothing, but at the same time, it's like one of those guys clearly is really slow but actually knows how to play six and knows how to play it defensively and knows how to play it offensively and the other one who's 19 and incredibly mobile doesn't. And sometimes it's not in a position like that in particular and probably also in center back. It's not always just about pure athleticism. Sometimes it's about actually knowing what you're doing. And we can point back to Assyria Mindy and how quality he was and a guy that's not particularly like notably athletic or rangy either, you know, and so they'll have some tough calls to make when, when you have a kid getting paid that they bought for $4 million, there's an emphasis to play him and, and he got outplayed by the old man who has bricks on his feet. [00:09:03] Speaker A: Armin, you are our friendly stat nerd. I'm going to ask you the. I'm going to ask you to tell me there's some sort of positive stat about this team that you have uncovered over the course of the season that gives you some glimmer of hope. There's at least one, right? [00:09:22] Speaker C: Are you asking me? Yeah, there was moments in the middle and I'd pop our. I guess we're kind of in the middle of the season, but kind of earlier on where their goals added number was really like higher. I think it was like top six or seven in the league at some point, but that's kind of slowly flatlined down. I mean, Minnesota had 1.7 expected goals I think around halftime, which is not great when you're at home playing against a team like Minnesota, who was on the road the week before against New York. When you look at it there the optimism isn't. There's some metrics that are okay. Like their expected goals are loud is slowly creeping up. It was kind of low and it's slowly kind of gotten a little bit higher. Especially with these recent run of games. They have a bunch of. They have a really decent expected goal number as well too because they're consistently, I think in losing situations. I haven't done the research into this specifically, but my assumption is when you're losing you're going to push up and you're going to try to produce more moments. I think a lot of their expected goals are coming from losing game states because they're consistently losing. Right. Like think about the Miami game where they flipped that game when they were down 3 1. A lot of their expected goals came from that losing game state of being down 3:1 to begin with. So I would say like they can score, they can produce situations, but they can't defend. Which just seems like a problem that we saw towards the end of last year as well too. It feels like where yeah, Peter Luxine was producing great offensive numbers for the team, but defensively they were leeching goals left and right. And I think Peter, we talked about a lot how Nico's style was more of okay, hey, like we'll be defensive defense first versus offense. Well this one seems to be kind of more along the lines what we see with Peter Luxine where it was, hey, we're going to be more offensive minded and yeah, we might be leaking the back. Which I think personally is actually the best way for his team to proceed. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Well, as Buzz said last week, I'm not sure this team's good at either offense or defense. [00:11:27] Speaker B: Well, here's. At the same time, that's the. [00:11:29] Speaker A: At the same time. Yeah, yeah. There's a really interesting and kind of sad side stat to this three game homestand triple loss which is road games are hard to win, period. But what's really hard to win is when you're on like the last road game of a series of road games back to back, like two road games in a row or three road games in a row or four road games in a row. So not only did Dallas manage to lose all three of those home games, all three opponents they played, this was the last game of a multi game road trip for each of those teams. One team was at the end of a four game road trip, one game was at the end of a three game road trip and one team, this last one was the end of a back to back road trip. I don't know if I've ever seen that before in Major League Soccer. [00:12:25] Speaker B: I've known. I don't know if I've ever thought to look that up before, but yeah. Or notice that that was the case. [00:12:30] Speaker A: I remember commenting in the previous episodes, oh, hey, maybe there's the. Maybe the hopeful sign is that this team's on a. You know, I think it was San Jose that was at the end of a four game road trip. And then nope, they lost that game. And then San Diego, I think it was San Diego that was a three game road trip. Nope. And then of course Minnesota. And I honestly got to say, now that I think about it, it would, I don't know how you would ever go about researching this, but when was the last time a home team lost three straight home games in Major League Soccer to teams that were at the end of a mult. Multi game road trip? [00:13:05] Speaker B: Well, it's, it's got to be relatively rare, you know, and the thing that's so confounding is that their road record is 4, 2 and 4. So like they have like of their 10 road games, eight of them are positive. A win or a tie. That's crazy bonkers good. And then to have one win at home is crazy bonkers bad. It's like it's the, it's the most lopsided, insane thing we've ever seen. You know, usually you would expect a flip of that. You'd expect a team that was four, two and four at home to have a one something record on the road. It's just absolutely mind boggling. And I cannot come up with any possible reason why this is the case other than this team just doesn't play well from a positive position in a lead position, in a feeling good position. They only play well when they feel like they're in an adverse condition. [00:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it was really frustrating. I guess really the most sad thing I saw in the aftermath was the league highlight of Minnesota's. I think it was the second goal, the throw in goal. Man, that's just the saddest goal I've ever. That's gotta be one of the saddest goals I've ever seen this team give up. And I just thought the actual video clip itself really encapsulated this season together perfectly because not only was it just a really crummy goal to. But the camera angle was to the north end of the stadium where it's nothing but an empty stage with some Toyota trucks in it and the tarped over seats and nothing else going on. And I thought, man, that's like, that's 20, 25 in 10 seconds right there. [00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that really is, you know, and both of those goals had similar properties in the sense that there was a guy at the back post not marked, you know, and, and Ibiaga's lunge at the throw in is. Is comical, you know, and, and it's just, it's those. Those individual moments are so terrible. And the, and the funniest thing to me was that after they got, you know, smoked on that first free kick from the left side, that was the first goal. The, The San Jose posted some photos of a. Of us, of the. What I thought was literally the same goal because the players are all marking the exact same people and standing in the exact same place the house ones are. But it turned out it's not. It's at the other end of the stadium and it's exactly the same. And so like, they didn't. It's even in the other half, so they didn't change up that I could tell any of the assignments after they got ripped on the first one. So it's like, I just don't. Sometimes I don't even know, like, just the guys on the field, like, change it up, man. Make sure somebody's getting marked up on all these people. [00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think this is a really good opportunity to kind of get into the situation in terms of Eric Quill. Eric Quill's culpability and all this as a manager. I, I've. I've said this on this podcast and other places. I, I think that this season is the frightening marriage of both a MLS rookie head coach and a front office that just is clearly not very good at roster building, at least not quickly, if at all. And, and I'm. And when we see things. Exactly what you talked about there, Buzz, which is players, you know, that. That those situations repeating themselves in the same game after one in one half and one in the other half. So you've had like an entire halftime to correct it, and you're. You don't do it. What is Quill's culpability in this, do you think? [00:16:35] Speaker B: Well, there's a. To that specific question. It can be hard to know because you don't know that the staff didn't address it and the players just don't or maybe aren't smart enough to get it and figure it out. You know, it's not necessarily a coaching failure. You know, at the same time, like that particular sort of mental lapse kind of problem hasn't really been a problem until very recently. I think it's a bigger question like this, this whole mentality problem of why you can't win at home, like, that's a much bigger indictment in terms of the coach. And you're right that, like, he is a rookie coach and there's going to be, you know, errors made, there's going to be problems with any rookie coach in this league. You know, I still think that of the candidates, of the kind of people that the Hunts hire, that he was about as good an option as you were probably going to get, you know, but he's not able to overcome the issues that the squad has. You know, he. He took a damn near half a season of tinkering to figure out how to make Lucha Costa work, which I think may actually be more about what a significant problem that all was, as much as that it was just being flabbergasted of how to get it to go because there are so many other pieces that don't work with it, and they're the wrong piece for this, that and the other thing. At the end of the day, I think you can look at a team like this and just think, you know, he's playing the very best center backs he has available, and yet those guys are just not anywhere near good enough, you know, And I don't know that you can blame Quill for that. You know, the fact that Shaq Moore has not shown that to be a good defender, that's not Quill's fault, right? The dude's 28. Like, you're not going to coach him up at this point. Like, they just signed a guy that wasn't a very good defender, you know, so, like, in the fact that you're. That this year, 16 is incredibly slow and the other one is incredibly naive. That's not Quill's fault either. You know, one of them just got here, and the other one is the, the. The general man, not your man. So the TDs, buddy. So, yeah, there. There's mistakes that Quill's making and there's things that, like, if the roster was flawless, you'd be questioning all these other things. But it's just like, you know, I think he's got such an uphill battle with the pieces he's being handed. I don't even know if it's fair to really judge the guy. He's going to be judged. There's no question his record is on par with guys that get fired. He's right there in the mix. With every fired coach in terms of what he's. What he's putting on paper in your record, you are what your record says you are at the end of the day, you know, so he may end up getting fired. I don't know if it's going to be fair, though, if it happens. Because, you know, I think all of us look at the way this thing's built and you're like, none of it makes any sense to us. And we've been saying that, by the way, for a long time. This is not like we just came up with this recently. It was. It was clear. [00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah. The other kind of weirdness about this particular match was unlike other games, this game, the team just came out really flat and just never really showed anything over the game. And then after the game, there were some. I didn't see this for myself, but I saw several reports in your discord that, like, Quill didn't leave the field through their own tunnel. Like, he went all the way to the other side of the field to go through the visiting tunnel or something like that. And then the press conference after the game was really unusual. His quotes where he really focused on the obvious tragedies happening in Central Texas and just how difficult it is to talk about any of this stuff when things are awful, things are going on in the world or nearby or things. And there was. I got the sense that something else was going on. And so I do feel like this is a good opportunity just to say that in the last 24 hours, it's come to light that the Hunt family is involved directly in this tragedy. As a cousin, I guess she would end up being like a third or fourth cousin to Dan and Clark on the other side of the Hunt family. A little girl. She was one of the little girls that was killed in the camp Mystic. Part of that tragedy. And. And clearly I. I get the sense that. I'm guessing, maybe I'm speculating, I'm over speculating, but I have a sense. I. I do wonder if maybe a reflection of how everybody's mood was that night was that they all knew this was probably something looming over them that they were all had on their mind. [00:20:56] Speaker B: I don't know if I can respond specifically to that without knowing, you know, how that was inside the team and inside the club. You know, that's something that if you're not in it, you're not in it. I will say that of the last, up until this point in the season and maybe the last two games even, you know, I know Quill Enough to recognize that he's angry. After the game, in the press conference, he's mad. And this, the last two he's started the press conference with what to me looks like. Looks like he's kind of defeated. Like he's kind of losing hope a little bit now as he gets talking, he gets angry about the deficiencies, and he gets angry about these mistakes. He's like, the bottom line is these mistakes can't happen. It's just not good enough, you know, and he's right about that, you know, But I still think that, like, just looking at his face, I know him well enough. You know, he and I aren't best buddies or anything, but I've known him long enough that I can see what I think and what I believe is defeat starting to creep in, that he just knows he doesn't have enough to be able to win these games, you know. But then we watch him play on the road, and sometimes you're like, how is this even the same team? But, like, even sit on the sideline, like, the look on his face was just like, this is awful. You know, that's a bummer. [00:22:14] Speaker A: I was kind of hoping that maybe the. Connecting the tragedy to the. Giving them kind of an excuse for their performance and in his kind of post. Post comp. His post game press conference kind of mood. But if you. If you. If you're sensing that he's just defeated, well, that may even actually be in. In his weird way worse. [00:22:35] Speaker B: It was way magnified in this most recent press conference, and it's very possible that it was magnified and accelerated by the tragedy. Like, I. I cannot tell you that it isn't that. Right. I just can tell you that, like, I was watching him on the sideline, he looked like he didn't want to be there, but you could easily say. I could easily say that he didn't want to be there because of all that tragedy. Right? Like, he may have felt really intimately connected to it because of his working for the Hunts, or maybe there's some part that we don't even aren't even aware of, that he has a connection. You know, he is from Houston, right? And those people down in that area and lives lived like a big chunk of most of his life down in that area, you know, ran a club down in that area. So, you know, Houston, Texas, was from, I believe, from the north side of town. So, you know, I would 100 buy that he was not feeling like he should be coaching a soccer game in that moment and the press conference, thinking why am I having to do this? This is not what I should be doing right now. Like so I can buy that, you know. But I felt like I was, I was sort of just starting to see a little bit of frustration and, and, and anger at the situation and not just the players and not just the mistakes like starting to sneak in the last game or two as this home stretch of losses continues because he's baffled by it and I think he's losing hope that he can fix it, you know and I, and I'm, I'm just reading that into what his face and he may tell me that that's completely wrong, but I didn't feel that up until very, very recently and, and maybe I'm getting it confused with the tragedy and the impact has had on him. That's totally fair. You know, we'll see what happens as we go forward here, I guess. [00:24:12] Speaker A: Well, lucky them. They get to go to LA and face off against LAFC on Saturday night at 9:30. I don't know if you want to preview that game at all if you have any sense as to who you think is Romero back in the starting lineup? [00:24:28] Speaker B: Well, I, I think it's, I think it's probable that Irigoti, excuse me, Irikide will be back. You know he was, would be in questionable last game. I think that means he probably will be available. A question would be like how early in the week he starts training and same with Anderson Julio. Usually it only, only questionable for like a week. So I think it's above average odds that both of those guys would be back. That's a big help. I, I do think that you would start Ramiro over Kaik based on performance but I also understand the investment in the young player and I also stand understand that if you're going to play with two eights in midfield with him, with, with the six, if you're going to have legit and you're going to have Delgado, that, that, that six needs to be able to get side on the sideline. So he may not have a choice but to go with Kai. Just to cover up for the fact he's playing a couple of guys that are going to both try and get forward quite a bit. So his hands are tied on that. So I, I think there's a good chance that you get those really two important players, Anderson, Hilly, which will go a long way otherwise I don't think you have any choices like Nolan's hurt. So it's, it's far fan. There's the Enzo Newman's out for the year. So it's more, it's, it's Acosta, it's Musa. Like there's, there's only like three positions or four positions that even can change at this point. You know, like he clearly doesn't think enough of Alvaro to play him. You know, when he has two older, healthier center backs. I guess what it would come down to is which center back do you think will do a better job paired with Urge if he is indeed back that that might actually be. You know, I thought Abubakar was out playing Ibiala for like a month there and then he got a start and didn't got a red card and then got a start and then made a mistake. So it probably would be Ibiaga again. Armand, what do you think? You got any feelings about this? [00:26:28] Speaker C: 11 I man, if I were them, I mean obviously they know their players better than I do. But starting Irigida against LAFC seems like a brutal way to come back from like a hamstring injury thrown into potentially covering when you're outside backs for Denny Buanga or pushing up Hollingshead or David Martinez, you know those guys are all like really lethal. And to come to be that the game that you come back from I think is tough. [00:26:56] Speaker B: It's tough because you go Ibiaga Abubakar versus those guys. [00:26:59] Speaker C: I mean again because you have a guy coming up with soft tissue injury, you got like, like you got to be a little careful, right? Like and he's played and he's. And I was talking to Dan about this when it happened. I'm not sure if he's mentioned on here or not, but Iraqi has put a lot of minutes this year guys, a lot of minutes. And you we like. I think the staffers has to be kind of wary of that because he'll continue to play like up there with guys that are like Champions League players etc in Europe. That's something the minutes he's was on a trajectory for before his injury. So I mean I forgot it. I can see maybe Irigide maybe having like a cameo appearance or something like that laid off there. If they're winning I'd be a little bit more cautious with him and I understand like things might be getting a little desperate etc, but I'd be a little bit more cautious with the Kaik and I'm blanking here. Oh, Ramiro debate is tough again because I think Ramiro is going to be a guy that can easily pull the strings in a game like this where LAFC is Constantly going to be on the attack and with the ball and yeah, I think you want that organization with a guy like Ramiro. But again, Kaik is the guy that he can also do those things. But there are going to be mistakes that come with it. Right? So, I mean, Buzz, I think your two changes are pretty spot on. There's not. You can't really do much changes to the roster. Like you're not going to bench Musa, right. You're not going to bench Acosta, you're not going to bench and the depth is so I would say weak that you can't really make that much changes. And now you're hitting a point to where you'll have a little bit of roster or, excuse me, schedule congestion. Where you go LAFC at LAFC at San Jose and then a really winnable game against St. Louis. There's gonna be a lot of rush condition, a lot of tired bodies before you have a week long break going into the match against NYCFC on July 25th. So, I mean, Buzz, I'm with you. And again, I think you as usual hit the nail on the head, especially with the whole debate at six, because again, I can see why you want to play a guy, develop him, get those minutes, etc, but now this is where the whole thing kind of comes around to. Okay, like if this is truly a rebuild, you're gonna play Kaik, right? [00:29:15] Speaker A: All right, before we get into that conversation, Armin, I know you're dying to do this, but. Yeah. So is. Am I wrong in thinking this is LA FC's first game back since the Club World cup games? I don't think they've played since their. [00:29:31] Speaker C: They lost to Vancouver one zero. And that was after the Club World cup games. [00:29:35] Speaker A: All right, so this is so they've what, had like a week and a half off? [00:29:38] Speaker C: Yep. Because the Austin game that they were supposed to play on Saturday got canceled due to the tragedy that happened in Central Texas. [00:29:46] Speaker A: That's what it was. They're supposed to. Yeah, they're supposed to be coming back from a road trip. [00:29:50] Speaker C: So they'll be playing Colorado on Wednesday and then at home and then they'll play Dallas and actually I'll be at that game hilariously. So. [00:30:00] Speaker A: Oh, so they'll play. They will have played a game before Saturday. [00:30:04] Speaker C: Correct. [00:30:05] Speaker A: Okay. The schedule has this all scoot up for what? The Colorado games in here, but they have it as May 31st for some reason, so. [00:30:12] Speaker C: Because it was one of the games that got moved for the, the club world. Remember that game where they played at Medica for the club World cup qualifier. It got moved. [00:30:20] Speaker A: That's what it is. Okay, well, this will shock nobody. The MLS website has it all goofed up, so whatever. All right, so this gets into the conversation that leads to Armand's participation in today's podcast, which is. I think I may have said it on the podcast or written it on the Discord or something, or buzzed it or somebody did. And I got this really just very terse text from armin, like at 2 o' clock in the morning, where I think he was drunk or something and said, I want to come on the podcast because this isn't a rebuild. So go ahead, go with your rant. Tell everybody why this isn't a. Isn't a rebuild. [00:31:00] Speaker C: Okay, so I've done a lot of thinking about this. I've done a lot of thinking into MLS roster building, because with the whole idea of, okay, you can carry over gam, etc, I was like, well, maybe a team should. May blow it up a year, just accumulate all this gam, then take it over to the next year, and maybe, who knows what happens? You have all this money, you can kind of compete for a year, especially with how the allocation money moves. I did a lot more research, and I thought about it kind of theoretically, and it's like rebuilding an MLS, unless you're a situation like Toronto, for example, or D.C. and for the context, Toronto, they just bought out both their DPs, two of their DPS, and now it's like, okay, we need. We need a clean rebuild. We spent all this money. They spent, what was it, I think, on Burn Insignia, More money combined on those two than Miami does on Messi, which is, like, pretty wild if you think about it. And to be that terrible and have that big a payroll. Okay, I think that makes sense. Even in the case of D.C. united, right? They got rid of Mateus Cliche. They have Benteke. They're in a bit of a weird spot because Cliche is still a dp. They're kind of in a rebuild, etc. And I could even make the argument about Houston, the Dynamo. They got Coco. They lost Coco Karaskia. They lost. Who was it? Massiel? I think it was the center back. Mikael. Excuse me, the center back. And they had to kind of go through a little bit of, like, a bit of a. I'd say kind of a slow start to get those. Get the proper pieces back into place. Dallas has the pieces, guys. And like, when I mean the pieces, I mean the money that they've spent. You spent $9 million on Peter Musa, $4 million on Kaik. You spent $3 million, give or take, on Uruguide. You look up and down the roster, they're not playing guys that are. I would say that would skew younger by any means. They're playing older MLS veterans. This is a team that, in my opinion, when we look at this, it also makes sense in the grand scheme of MLS that's trying to compete now, that and Buzz, I. I know you've always talked about that kind of Playoffs is a standard. They're trying to compete now for a playoff spot. It you don't spend. And Lucho Acosta, how could I forget, you don't spend this kind of money to say we're rebuilding, you know, etc. Etc. Sure, there's going to be moves that are made, but this team, and to be honest with you guys, I. I think the team should be a little bit closer in the postseason hunt, not the playoff hunt, but the postseason hunt, than it is right now because of, again, when you acquire a guy like Lucho Acosta, when you have a guy like Peter Musa, you know, you bring a guy like Anderson. Julio. Anderson. Julio isn't this young player. He's like, what, 27, 28, give or take. He's in. And he's in the prime of his career. IR is 24, which I think, again, was a great. We talked about Tom, the great acquisition. These guys that they're playing outside of, I think CA is the only player that I would say, oh, that kind of signifies a rebuild within this. And again, mls, it doesn't really make sense to rebuild. There's no draft. You're not gonna get the number one overall pick. You're not gonna go into the lottery and pray for a chance at an amazing college player that doesn't really exist. The MLS is one of the leagues where consistently competing makes sense because there's no incentives for being bad. And that's what kind of makes it. That's what kind of makes it fun. But for me, guys, you don't invest this kind of money and say, this is a rebuild. I think for them, they had the Velasco money, they put it to use, and now this is, I guess, more of a retool than a rebuild. And for me, I know it might be a semantics thing. Tomato, tomato, as you. As you told me, Peter. But for me, I just don't see us as a rebuild. I think calling it a rebuild lets everyone off the hook. [00:34:51] Speaker A: Okay, I. I do think it's a semantics issue. But let me. So just to just for argument's sake, do you consider Armand that San Jose is in the middle of a rebuild? [00:35:02] Speaker C: No. [00:35:03] Speaker A: Oh really? [00:35:04] Speaker C: I don't think so. I mean when you get the moves like Joseph Martinez, Chicho Arango, you have Christian Espinoza as well. That's Bruce arena gunning for a play, a playoff spot, Bo LaRue, these guys, etc, that's rebuilding an MLS does not really make sense because again, think of it like the only situations I think that can make sense are a team like Toronto. We're saying we are not getting results with these guys. This is not working. We're going to buy them out and we're going to take our time buying dps. This season essentially becomes a lost season and you slowly turn over the roster and look at a team like D.C. united, that's a team I mentioned. Like I guess it's kind of a rebuild and they're stuck. They like, they're not really doing anything when it comes down to actually rebuilding or playing as many young players, et cetera. They've kind of retooled the roster. But I don't really call that rebuild. [00:35:51] Speaker A: Okay, maybe this is just purely semantics, but I'm sitting here looking at San Jose's in inbound players this year. There's, they added 12 people to their roster. I don't know how you, I don't know how that's not a rebuild. [00:36:05] Speaker C: I, I, when I think of a rebuild I think of more of like hey, we, we're, we're shifting mentality to. I think it's a clean like a, like more of like a refresh than a rebuild. [00:36:17] Speaker A: Maybe this is a better way of going about it. Give me an example of a team that, whether it, you know, recently or in MLS pass that did a true Armin defined rebuild. [00:36:28] Speaker C: That's tough because like I'm trying to think of one off top of my head because it's super hard. [00:36:34] Speaker A: Buzz, you're the old guy. Do you have any example of that? [00:36:38] Speaker C: Because I don't think I'm rebuild, to be honest with you. [00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I think S.C. dallas is rebuilding. [00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Armin, I think this is a semantics issue because Dallas is playing five new people in 11 starting positions this year. And, and, and maybe this is just functionally a tomato tomato thing, but when you literally change out half of your starting 11, whether it's a retool or rebuild, I don't think it makes any difference. I think to the, the rank and file fan it looks like you're in the middle of starting over from scratch again. And that's really what I think drives people the most nuts, especially in Dallas's case, which is this is now the third time it's either a retool or a rebuild in the last nine years. Can we agree on that? [00:37:25] Speaker C: Oh, 100%, I think. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Okay. [00:37:27] Speaker C: I think it's when I think of rebuild, right? Like, I think of the American sport rebuild, where it's like, hey, we stink. We need to. We need to. We need to rebuild through you youthful players. I would probably say that when I think about it, Philadelphia's kind of not, I wouldn't say done it, but are kind of maybe closer to it. They said, hey, we're going to go through and play with our academy guys. We're going to boost all these academy guys up, you know, like play a lot more of our homegrowns relative to what's going on. I think in Dallas's case, like a re. Like, I think they should be, you know, with again, the money invested, they should be pushing for, I think, a playoff spot. I think. I think you're right. It might be more of a semantics thing, but again, when I think of rebuild, I think of America, Classic American, hey, re rebuilding our team. We're doing xyz, etc. It's going to take multiple years to get to that point. But you can't do that when you have a guy like Peter Musa and Lucho Acosta on your team. [00:38:35] Speaker A: Buzz your thoughts here. [00:38:37] Speaker B: Yeah. When we went into the off season, you remember, we talked a lot about how they had to vacate the contracts of Jesus and Paul and they were going to be eating part of those contracts this year. They cleared out. So they cleared out multiple dps and they. And over the winter, we were talking about they had one DP and we were talking about they were going to be wooden spoon. They brought in Shackmore, they changed their right back, they brought in a center back. And we told them, we said, everybody, they should have brought in two. So that's three of your four back line that should have been changed. And really you only change to the four. But they brought in Abubakar, who theoretically is getting paid starter money. So you could argue that they really did try to change three of the four. They tried to change the six. They didn't do a good job of that. They brought in Anderson, Julio, who I told everybody should be a starter, and everyone tried to tell me that he's never been a starter. So that's a rebuild piece. Right. So we were looking at until Lucho Acosta fell into their lap because they literally changed the rules to allow that guy to move so that Evander could move. Right. And then out Dallas got a bonus DP out of nowhere that they weren't expecting to be and Al Vasco left unexpectedly. So you've. You've literally rebuilt and changed like half of your team already and you're still short of dp, right? You moved out a bunch of pieces and you did all that and you spent all this money and you still stink. So you're. You've only done step one of the rebuild. You have to bring in at least another center back. You probably have to bring in a six. You maybe has legit's getting quite old and gets paid a million dollars. You have to probably vacate that contract. Paxton's never playing again. You got to vacate that contract. You. They've talked about how they want to go back to their core and play the kids to come through. The other one that's playing is Norris. So that's going to take some time for those guys to come through. You ask yourself, yes, you spend enough money, you should be able to keep competing for the playoffs. But the making the playoffs isn't the point. [00:40:45] Speaker A: Well, it's almost harder not to make the playoffs, frankly. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Right, right. But the point is winning a title, you don't rebuild to make ninth place. You rebuild to win a title. So yes, it's a rebuild. Yes, it will take another two seasons to turn over all the crap pieces on this roster to actually make a team that compete, can compete for a championship. Now if you tell me that that's too long for Pater Musa and Lucho Casa and then you're just even more underlying the idea that they have screwed up this rebuild already. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Right. [00:41:17] Speaker B: And have. Have buy pieces that don't fit together and aren't going to be around long enough to be able to have a cohesive unit that actually compete at the top of the league. Right. That's. That's the end of the game. Right? Win a championship. Like this talk of like, oh, you've done good enough to make the playoffs. Who gives a crap about making the playoffs other than apparently the owner. That shouldn't be. We shouldn't even be talking about that. We should be talking about can you compete with these teams in the top three or four spots in the league? And the last couple of games against people like San Diego shows me that you're not even close. [00:41:53] Speaker A: So Buzz, you posted just to kind of put some more color on this. The other day, you posted what you call the Zenata error and era or error. [00:42:02] Speaker B: Yeah, error was your word, not mine. [00:42:04] Speaker A: And it shows where the team finished in the. In the Western Conference from his run in 2019 to today. And out of all of that, the highest. I actually found this fascinating because it actually tells a really interesting story related to what you just said. Said about expectations. Which is the highest was obviously 2022, Nico Esteban's first year, when they finished third out of 14 in the West. But his run from 2019 goes 7 of 12th, 6th of 12th, 11th of 13th, 3rd of 14th, 7th of 14th, 11th of 14 and 13, currently of 15. And I thought, this. That is a shitty record. Until I realized that out of all of that, only twice did they miss the playoffs. [00:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:59] Speaker A: And according to how this club sees themselves, that's good enough. That's like. That's the bar set. Anything. Anything past making the playoffs appears to pass as house money. [00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah, well, they've said that the. The Minimum is making the playoffs, and they say that they're trying to win championships. So are you. If you're trying to win championships, this team is not within a light years of winning a championship. So it's like, it's. That's why it's a rebuild. You have to still do massive work to be able to compete at the top of this league, you know, and there's seasons in there where guys didn't make the playoffs, they got fired. So. [00:43:38] Speaker A: So if we. If Buzz and I want to call it a. A rebuild, and Armand, you want to call it a retool, how about we meet in the middle and we call it a reboot? [00:43:52] Speaker B: Well, it's like if Ahmad could be right, that you shouldn't have, like a full rebuild, that you should retool. But they did that then, and this team's not. It stinks. [00:44:01] Speaker A: Right? Well, I think. Well, okay, so this is. This is why I think this conversation is fascinating, because last year we talked all season long on this podcast about how the outcome of the 2024 season was so predictable, starting in January, that nobody should be surprised they ended up missing the playoffs. Like it was. It was about as predictable an outcome of a season as we've ever had in Dallas. We have agreement on that. I feel like that up until the Lucho Acosta edition happened, we also were like, okay, this is going to be a rough season, but they're kind of starting over a reboot because they're changing formation, they've changed coaches, they're going to Change. All these players they got rid of, you know, they've essentially emptied out their academy products that they had added to the team. The only one left is the hurt one. And so, you know, there's. This is a really different looking FC Dallas team. Then they get Lucho Acosta and some of us take a minute and go, wait a second. How does that fit with everything else they're doing? Because that clearly, the Lucho Acosta edition. [00:45:12] Speaker C: Yep. [00:45:12] Speaker A: I think creates a. I think that creates a tremendous conflict within the club, which is we. We're trying to do a. Adding Lucho Acosta doesn't fit that we. Everybody knows this. Like, nobody that's been paying attention to this league saw them adding Lucha Acosta and, And. And paired that with what they had been trying to do over the previous, you know, four or five weeks leading up to his addition and went, oh, that makes sense. [00:45:40] Speaker B: Well, remember that they weren't expecting to lose Alan Velasco. They gave him an extension and a raise. [00:45:46] Speaker A: Sure. [00:45:47] Speaker B: By all, by all signs and all people we talked to, he was going to be moving into the middle and he was. Become the playmaker, the string puller. And then all of a sudden they lose him, surprisingly, because they. They got offered money they couldn't refuse, and then the league changes this rule and all of a sudden, here's Lucha Acosta. And so perhaps in a panic move, they're like, we had. We had this expensive, young, exciting guy with. It was going to be our 10, and he's gone. Oh, shit. Oh, wait, there's Lucia Costa. Grab that guy. But it's entirely possible that was the wrong choice. [00:46:16] Speaker A: Well, but here's the other thing, Buzz. I think leading up to before we ever had any idea Lucha Acosta was coming to this team, I still think a lot of us were very suspect about how this season was going to go with or without Velasco, simply because I don't think any of us really knew how good Alan Velasco was going to be. And by the way it turned out, he's still having some struggles down in Brazil, I mean, in Argentina. And so I don't know if that. I don't know if that would have ended up being the same outcome one way or the other. I don't know. And maybe it's not fair to say that, but my point being in all of this is, is that where they are right now in the standings, I don't think is a huge surprise. How it's happened, I think is a bit of a surprise in the fact that they've had some success on the road and zero success at home. That's kind of weird. But the fact that they're sitting in what now is essentially near wooden spoon contention isn't necessarily a surprise. [00:47:14] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we. If you look at Velasco specifically, the big knock on him was that it doesn't, the skill doesn't translate into actual assists or goals, either one. And no, we were all a bit worried about how that was going to look as a 10. Now he. He goes and we're talking like, okay, wooden spoon. And then Lucha Acasa comes back in and we all thought, oh, maybe that'll be enough to boost him up. But then you have to think about things like, you know, we talked all winter about they need a center back and it didn't happen. Then we talked all winter about they probably really need to get a six in here and see how that's going to go. That they tried that and it hasn't really worked so far. Then you have to look at the fact that they got rid of their two starting wings most of the time. Right? Paul Areola, he played some wing back. We played a lot of wing, too. And Jesus Farrell, both gone. And they brought in Anderson, Julio, they didn't replace the other wing. Right. So you're like, you look at this team and like, where's the wing they. [00:48:02] Speaker A: Traded for Leo Chu and they just sold it. [00:48:04] Speaker B: Well, we just talked about how Leo Chu was never brought here to be a play to play. He was bought here as a make weight to be sold. [00:48:11] Speaker C: Yep. [00:48:11] Speaker B: Like, I remember talking over the winner with people that were like, yeah, he's not a player. Right. He was a chip, not a player. So, like, you know, the idea that, like, this team is by any means finished product, that this is what they intended to be doing is kind of crazy. You know, they had so much happen that got blindsided by including Lucha Casa falling into her lap. And I'm starting to feel like maybe they shouldn't have taken Lucho Casa. They should have gone with somebody young. You know, remember the whole thing about Delgado being a 10, you know, or Pedrinho signing Petrino from North Texas and Quill talking about what a great playmaker that guy is. Maybe it should have just been those guys and not Lucho Acosta. Because now you've eaten up this humongous part of your payroll and your cap with taking up a DP spot, you know, for a guy who's already 30. And if you're talking about a two or three year rebuild will be 32, 33 by the time you're actually ready to compete for something. So it may have all been wrong. [00:49:09] Speaker C: Choice and will he stay? Right? That's it. And that's the question, right? Because in Cincinnati he kind of forced his way out and said, okay, like this is, this isn't working out. And the situation could arise where, you know, what if the club sells Peter Musa in the summer? I think that's very possible with what's going on. Then you have a Lucho Acosta coming there, which you'd anticipate that, you know, the club has, you know, replacements lined up at striker, right? Like, okay, hey, we got, you know, we take this, move some money, we reinvest, etc, they've done that and we've seen that with the Velasco move and how they reinvested that. But you know, again, when you bring in a player in this, in the summer window, they have very limited time make impact in the ML in the MLS season. So then it's like, is Lucho Costa going to wait and wait a wait again. [00:49:56] Speaker B: So Armand, if they sell, if they sell Musa and if they sell Acosta, is this, is that a rebuild? [00:50:02] Speaker C: Yes. [00:50:05] Speaker A: According to Armin, that would be the very first rebuild in MLS history. [00:50:09] Speaker C: I mean that would be a complete tear down of everything. Again, it's like it would be. That would be rough. If you want to think if they don't replace either of those guys, that would be rough to. [00:50:20] Speaker A: Oh, just think of all the GAM they'd be swimming in though. [00:50:24] Speaker C: Guys, they would get no gaming, would get no GAM guys, oh, they wouldn't. They wouldn't. Because Musa full designated players. So players that cannot be bought down, they do not get GAM if they're sold. The only way that they could receive GAM for those players if they, if they were sold intra league. So for example, when Cincinnati sold Lucho Acosta to Dallas, they received GAM for him even though he was a full dp. But if they sold Lucho Acosta outside of mls, if he sold Peter Musa outside mls, they would receive zero gam. There's open up two DP spots. So they get a lot of cash. They would have cash on hand, right, to spend on transfers. Exactly correct. But they would not have allocation money to, to convert or spend within the league. It would just be money that you have to spend on transfers and stuff like that. [00:51:11] Speaker A: So that leads me to this because I feel like we could just prattle on about this forever, endlessly. Everybody tired head. But what I would say is this is the windows. Is HAP is coming up quickly. When is the window actually at the end of the month. Is it Buzz? [00:51:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's the 24th. [00:51:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so, too. [00:51:34] Speaker B: It's definitely the end of the month. Towards the end of the month. I think it's the 24th. [00:51:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So they're not so far out of it at this point that you know that they're not. I mean, there's just zero chance they make the playoffs. I mean, they're. It's not good, guys. They're on 21 points. They're five, but they're only five points out of a play in spot. Or actually LAFC is also on 26. They're in seventh, so. [00:51:57] Speaker C: But they have three games in hand. [00:51:59] Speaker A: Okay, stop it, Armond. Let me enjoy my thing. And my point is, is that it probably is fair to at least wait and see how the transfer window goes. I know what history tells us about Dallas transfer windows historically under the hunts. But with this new crew and everybody telling me and everybody insisting that this is a new day and age, that Zenata is not doing this by himself and all of his new buddy and pals are really good at this. I don't they at least deserve until the end of the window before we really hold judgment on the 2025 season. [00:52:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I. Last window, you know, I wrote about. I put out this plan, like, you got to get rid of these pieces and you got to start bringing in this new stuff. And they did that stuff. Not because I read. They read my thing. That's stupid. They did it because that. It was so obvious that those things need to happen. And they made a couple of good moves. Ira Gideon looks great. Right. I think Anderson Julio has been a terrific addition. Right. They've done some decent things. The kid Alvaro looks like he might actually be a nice fine. Maybe Kai. He in a couple of years is good. I'm just saying, like, there were some positive first moves. Okay, but is it anywhere near done? No. Like, but you have another window coming up right here where you can do some good things. Am I going to judge the coach by the end of this season? No, I. I think he deserves this whole year because he needs three windows to get this team turned over enough to be the play the team he wants to play. So it started next year. Then all of a sudden we're really going to start keeping score on that regard. But at the same time, I think you have to wonder if Lucia Acosta was the wrong move. Like I liked every, pretty much everything else they did on paper. I was like, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. Makes sense. Except not bringing back your Mindy and bringing Romero. Other than that one was bad, but the other things seemed good, but it was all step one. That's why I talk about if this wasn't a rebuild, if this one wasn't step one of a rebuild, then you're. Then it's all crepe, crepe crap. Because then it doesn't make it. This doesn't work. It makes no sense. It only makes sense if it was just step one of a three window process. You know, that gets quilled the team that he wants. So you know, we're gonna find out. [00:54:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it is crap. Here's my. [00:54:11] Speaker B: I think they deserve two more windows probably. [00:54:15] Speaker A: And, and I'd like to think that this is all part of some sort of long term plan. But here's my concern with all this buzz and we talked about this at the beginning of the season and I really feel like that this is now even more critical with some of the things that have come up and been announced in the marketplace since the season has started, which is the following. I undergoing this insane stadium project for whatever the reason. Right. [00:54:44] Speaker B: Wrong. [00:54:44] Speaker A: Indifferent. We didn't have any other options. [00:54:46] Speaker B: This is. [00:54:47] Speaker A: We're doing the best we can. Whatever it is. The fact that they are undergoing this insane project of rebuilding the stadium around its fans in its games over the course of three seasons. I really feel strongly that part of what they have to do is put a product on the field that doesn't drive everybody into just pure apathy by the time the new stadium opens in 2028. Because with all of the other options that are starting to pop up in town, man, you could see a situation where this becomes kind of a weird South Lake version 2.0. If you know they only you and I both know that they're running around touting a continuous sellout streak. And I get it. That's just the semantics of sellouts and that's how the league allows teams to get away with it. But you and I both know that on July 4th, first off a game they always win that they didn't win and 2 now they only have 11,000 seats to sell and have it butts in seats. What was it, 80 full? [00:55:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:55] Speaker A: Friday night? [00:55:56] Speaker B: Yeah, 80 was what I would said. Yeah. [00:55:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Well you. If this season continues to go the way it's going, you can see the direction all this is headed, especially with the game day experience is only Going to get worse from here before it gets better. [00:56:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it, it. And again, I think Peter, you again you mentioned a break, a great point. They have to put a product that's going to be entertaining on the field and that yes, it might have some lumps but it has to be something to where people want to go because again, there's multiple other options that are popping up that might take away from that. And look, I understand it's the only Emma like I guess, quote unquote, first division team in the area. But people want to feel connected and also people just want to, you know, watch good fun soccer to a degree. And if you're not getting that in the stadium where the atmosphere might be just kind of brutal, etc, or you know, for example, I think Peter Moose has been excellent for FC Dallas. If he's sold and they struggled maybe to get a replacement that comes in immediately, then you're looking at oh man, this is kind of like a lost 20, 25 season. Apathy kind of starts to go up etc and oh yeah, your noisy neighbor down, down the road is also starting to pick, ramp up especially you know, within, within a year. So look, I understand that they might have, that they may have a greater plan that they might have a, like a, you know, multi year rebuild on the Cards, etc. I just, I, to me there's going to be a lot of tests that are coming up including, I think we're kind of glossing over it. But I think there is going to be some sort of thing with Musa coming up in the summer. I don't know anything. It just seems like the natural progression of a player of his caliber saying hey, maybe I want to go back to Europe. What's going on right now isn't, isn't exactly what I expect what I expected, especially with, you know, the situation he's in club wise where a lot of guys in the discord, I think have pointed out that Paso Lich for Orlando City has played his way into the Croatian team and he's had an absolutely fantastic season. While Musa sitting here saying, well damn, I'm really in a situation where, you know, I'm not really getting the moments to shine, etc, do I maybe go back to Europe? And then again, you're stuck with another decision to bring another forward and kind of continue going through this situation where you're refreshing, you're refreshing, you're refreshing versus kind of what other teams do in MLS where yeah, those things happen but you can trust them to bring in a trusted player that can fill in Those gaps, like think of a team like the Columbus Crew lose Cucho Hernandez and they're like, all right, well we'll look to bring in Daniel Gos dog and see how he fits and have Jason Russell roasted up etc. [00:58:35] Speaker B: So, and that last bit, Armand, is everything. That ability to actually identify and bring in people. [00:58:43] Speaker C: Exactly. And the, the way that, you know, a lot of, like a lot of these MLS teams do, it are, it's, it's starting to be really great. And again, like a guy like Musa is a very talented player, but how long are you going to be able to hold on to a guy like that? And if you have to again, change that up, then you're looking at bringing a player maybe five, make it five or six games towards the end of this year. That's going to have to acclimate to the US and then you have to go through that process. If you bring in a player that's international, these things take a lot of time. And I mean, again, I think this moose I think is going to be a little bit bigger in the summer and there's going to be a lot more decisions that are going to, I guess contribute to the re. The reef, whatever we call reboot, I think is what we agreed on. [00:59:29] Speaker B: Peter, I want to go on the record. If people start blaming me for the quote, unquote, Musa thing that it was Armand. Armand made up the music. There's no insider knowledge thing for me. It's all Armand. [00:59:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I do think, Armand, you've, you've brought up the idea, the concept of Musa being traded in the window a few times. And, and it should, I just want to repeat that we, that I don't, Armand's just speculating and hyping. [00:59:57] Speaker C: I'm spitballing. [00:59:58] Speaker A: This is not spitballing and, and doing hypotheticals here. Not. [01:00:01] Speaker C: Yeah, this is not insider knowledge or anything. No, nothing. [01:00:04] Speaker A: I, I would, I would throw out, just to kind of quell that to some degree is the fact that Musa also is a brand new father. He just had a baby recently at the beginning of the season. The idea of packing up and moving back overseas would only be in the most extreme, extreme of situations, meaning a really, really big deal both for him personally and for the club. So financially. So I, I, I would, I mean I would be, I would be shocked upon, shocked if he got sold in this particular window or even the next window, to be honest with you. I just, I, I would be blown away if that was the case. And I don't want anybody coming away from this, this podcast thinking that any of us here were saying it's going to happen or we would like for it to happen, because I don't think any of us on that case, I. You know, Buzz, there was a rumor running around today, I guess from the Brazilian press or something, that Rafael Vega, the midfielder, the attacking midfielder from Palmeiras, was somehow connected to Dallas. And I find that to be unlikely for a whole bunch of reasons. One is cost to the fact that he's already 30 and everything. But the reason why I bring it up is if in some sort of weird super world where Dallas actually did end up with a guy like that at the end of this window, while I would have very little hope that it would have an impact on this particular season, it would be something that would at least give people something to glom onto for next season. [01:01:32] Speaker B: It would. But I, I think if I was reading that article correct correctly, there's like a 60 million dollar, you know, out clause trigger which is not within a billion years of FC Dallas's money. And if you, and if you read in the context of those things, it says like that Dallas called about it. Well, you know, Zada has connections to Palmeris, so I'm sure he did call about him. I'm sure he called and asked. [01:01:57] Speaker A: I look at the Porsche website several times a month. [01:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure he called and I'm sure like he was like, hey, if you guys ever are just going to let that guy go, I'm like, not the, not the $60 million buyout, but if you ever want to talk about like a reasonable number, we would be happy to talk about it. I mean, that, that's a call, right? That happens all the time. People are like, oh, it's called about him. Well, of course they did. They probably call thousands, if not thousands. They probably call boatloads of teams about players. That's, that's the, it's not his job, right? So I, I would be annoyed if there was a players at Palmeiras or Grimio or lots of these Brazilian clubs that he's not calling and asking about it. So, you know, just that even if it's true, which is not necessarily real either, Dallas gets used a lot by agents around the world because everyone knows the name Dallas, but doesn't know about this team. So people will go, oh, that's what I was called, you know, So I, I would not read anything into that. Unless you, unless you see Palmeiras putting that guy like on a fire sale. And then like you could maybe Consider that Dallas might be in on that. But, you know, I. I would not put any legitimacy behind that idea. You know, I'm sure there's lots of guys that they've called about that you just don't hear about because some agent wanted to tweak someone's nose, threw that out there or whatever. So, you know, they. They do have the ability to switch to a third dp. So they could add a dp. It will cost them. Is it a million bucks they have to get back? [01:03:26] Speaker C: Yeah. So, yeah, if. When you take that 1 million from discretionary. Well, yeah, when you take out 1 million, you spend from discretionary money, essentially. If you've only spent up to a million of that money, you can. Then if you have an open U22 spot, which Dallas now has, well, we'll have. I guess with the sale of Leo Chu, they can switch to 3DP plus 3U22. But they would lose a million of the game that they haven't used. [01:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah. The last time we saw that number published, it was they had 2 million of 20, 25 games. They definitely have a bunch more. [01:04:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:02] Speaker B: Outside of that. [01:04:02] Speaker C: So I was gonna say they definitely, I think, have the ability to do so again. It's just up to whether they would want to or not. [01:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And obviously in a Soli and his loan situation could factor as the U22 GMI is out for the season. So that's not a worry. It's all. But you know, they have pieces that can be. You know, you can always loan in a Sully out again. Hell, you can just let them North Texas clear them if you have to. But, you know, they do have the ability to do stuff. I think. I think they're currently sitting on before Leo two even moves. I think they have three open spots and two internationals. I say that off top of my head. I didn't look before we did this, but that's. That does not open international spots. Just a green card. He has a green card. So it's just another spot. But it is a U22 or as we said, could be a DP. So they have the ability to do some stuff. Let's see what they do. [01:04:56] Speaker A: We'll all sit with bated breath. They also announced that officially July 19, which is the night they're going to wear the new third jerseys, the new Black Burn throwback jerseys. Buzz. Correct. [01:05:08] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. [01:05:09] Speaker A: So that is officially what they're calling 90s Night with Dallas Burn legends. And there's actually some cool ones in here. Jeff Casar is going to be there. The old goalkeeper Jason Kreiss is going to be back in town. Federal judge Richard Farrer is going to be, by the way, weird side note, I actually dressed up as Richard Farrer for Halloween one year because I actually had a full Richard Ferrer kit. I don't know why or how I ended up with it. The shorts and the jersey where the pick Wanker. True story. Mark Dodd will be there and the big name El Zarco is going to be in attendance as well. [01:05:45] Speaker B: Stop it. Jason Christ was the big name. [01:05:47] Speaker A: Yeah, but we see Jason. How often do we say, do we get to see Zarco the these days? [01:05:52] Speaker B: Not very often. He comes back every couple years. [01:05:54] Speaker A: And I'm just assuming that the big surprise that they just are waiting to just blow everybody away with that night is the Ted Eck appearance. But they're keeping that on under wraps because Dallas Burns Legend night isn't complete without the greatest burn legend of all time, TedX. So we'll keep that. The other thing that we should mention real quickly is the very sad and unexpected passing of one of the biggest, most legendary soccer figures in the Dallas Fort Worth soccer scene. Gordon Jago passed away in his sleep the other night and it's very sad. Man, what a guy. Out in front of the Sidekicks for all those years. His involvement with Dallas cup and, and so 92, I think he was so. What a great long life that man lived. [01:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know him personally, but obviously he's a legend here in the Dallas market. You know, I didn't even know he had a career before things like the Sidekicks. You know, just the Sidekicks and the Dallas cup work he did alone made it what made him a legend in my book. And, and he had a long playing career and coaching career before all that happened, so. [01:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's especially sad because he just made a live appearance a couple of weeks ago when men in blazers were in town and had Clint Dempsey, he. He showed up at that thing, so. [01:07:17] Speaker B: Right, right. [01:07:18] Speaker A: Rest in peace, dear sir Jago. All right, let's move on a couple of things. North Texas won a game. [01:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, they won 3 to 1 over the Loons second team. Tark Scott had two goals, although to be fair, I don't think he played very well other than two goals even. He said something about that and went in his postgame quote and Sam Sarver scored a goal and had two assists. Played like 60 minutes and subbed out and then showed up the next day on the bench for FC Dallas. I know which was crazy. But you know, as opposed to you can give him 30 minutes there, he ended up playing a few minutes and had a couple of touches. But you know, he's the, he's by far the player that right this second is the. Is the closest to being able to help FC Dallas in any capacity. It doesn't mean he will, but he's the closest. You know, the gap between those two clubs now is so big that you have to be completely dominating that level before you're going to be considered for the first team. And Sarver is the only ones completely dominating that level other than Josh Stricotta who you've already seen. He's doing phenomenal stuff at left back. But you know, there's not really anybody else right now that you think, oh, that guy could maybe help. No, there really isn't anybody. It's just server. So. Particularly because Dallas is short wings at the minute, you know, and Leo, she leaving makes it even more so. So we'll see if you actually get to see him again. That would be kind of cool if I have a little bit of a run. Not that I think he could become a starter like right this minute, but it'd be nice to sort of test him at the MLS level and see if he has what it takes to make a step up. [01:08:43] Speaker A: And don't look now, but Texoma continued their unbeaten run as they beat Ford Madison. [01:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah, they're up to six in the standing on 19 points. Technically that's tied for fifth, but they're. They're down on the goal differential so they don't have the fifth spot. That turnaround is crazy. Like to go from like they were like 03 and 2 or something like that to then like now they. They haven't lost since. And it's like it's. And it's mostly wins. It's like it's. It's the most bonkers turnaround I've ever seen in one. Like to be so dramat dramatically like. Like draw a line in the sand, you know, like the change the keeper, bring in a couple of guys on visas and it went from the worst team in the league to what apparently is one of the best teams in the league in about a two day span. It's incredible actually. [01:09:32] Speaker A: I take that back. It wasn't the Texoma game that the people were wearing the wiggle butt shirts. It was the McKenna Chupacabras game is what it was. And did the, did Chupacabras win that game? [01:09:44] Speaker B: I don't know. Oh, I don't pay attention to results at that level. [01:09:48] Speaker A: Who are you and what have you done with Buzz Carrick? [01:09:50] Speaker B: Yeah, what I pay. What I pay attention to is that they had 4,000 at that game, which. Which puts them over 20,000 for the. For their five home games. [01:09:58] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. [01:10:00] Speaker B: If I, If I did my math correctly, which is bonkers. Insane for us. [01:10:06] Speaker A: Okay. And. And this is an interesting question. Out of the 4,000 people, what day was that game? Saturday? [01:10:14] Speaker B: Oh, I believe it was Saturday. [01:10:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so out of that, out of that 4,000 people, how many of those people elected to go to the McKinney game instead of going to the July 4th FC Dallas game? Any of them. You think there's any crossover there? [01:10:30] Speaker B: I don't know about that game specifically, but there was a game, I want to say, a week ago when we had the big storms on the game day, and then there was like, the game got delayed. Right. That game, you remember that game. Chupacabras had a game the same night that got delayed. And they had. They had like 5,000 people originally, and after the weather, 3,000 of them were still there. And I was. On the same night, there was, you know, 11,000 at Frisco. So it was literally less than 10 miles away with those people. [01:10:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I just, I wonder, and I have no, I have no idea how you would ever figure this out. You'd have to run some surveys or something. But is there a subset of people who were going to Dallas games who were like, you know what, why don't I just go, I live in McKinney, why don't I? Or live closer to the McKinney game, why don't I just go there? They're cheaper and blah, blah, blah. I just, I'm curious if that's a thing. I don't know. [01:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. That's what I mean. It's like they're. They're doing the same numbers head to head as they are not head to head. So these people that are going to the cheaper cover games are going there the whole. All five home games. Yeah. You know, interesting. Not going to see Dallas games at the same time. You know, so it's. When they're. At the same time. So whether those people were FC Dallas fans that NFL switched or whether they were people that didn't go to Seattle and only cared about the. I mean, listen, he's hyper local, hyper connected, you know, with all the stuff in the community there, it's very different play. So, you know, you would need a real marketing study to be able to answer those questions. But the numbers that they've done there are just absolutely, you know, I've been to NPSL or USL2 games where, where there's literally less than 10 people in the stands here locally. And that team is just doing absolutely crazy. You know, 5,000, 4,000, 5,000. It's just, it's amazing. You know, this is not a team in a little town. This is not drawing 4,000 in Lubbock or 4,000 in Sherman. Madison's a bad example. Sherman, you know, which they don't get that. You know, this is in McKinney down the street, you know, less than a baseball throw from Toyota Stadium. And you're drawing that. It's incredible. [01:12:36] Speaker A: Well, I, before we close up, I will share with everybody that I got my black. Crude or crude. Is it black? Crude or crude Black Official Atletico Dallas jersey in the mail and I recommend it. It's very nicely done. It's high quality. The attention to detail is really, really good. I would also forewarn you because they are Chinese sourced, you may want to consider because not only are they Chinese source, which means they are Chinese sizes, they also are athletic cut. So you may want to consider at a minimum getting two sizes larger than you normally would. So if you're a large XL at a minimum, double XL is probably likely. And if you're not into tight fitting clothes, you may want to go three sizes larger because they are, they do run very, very small. So that would be my advice to you. All that aside, and that is not a criticism, that's just the reality of what it is. The quality of it is really nice and they look great. So. [01:13:44] Speaker C: Yeah, they seem to look awesome. [01:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got lots of boutique touches that make it feel like it's a million bucks. It's a fantastic jersey and it's not a specific brand, it's their own, you know, label. [01:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah, they went out and sourced it themselves. [01:13:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they are. I can, I can officially tell you that they are in conversations with multiple companies to be their actual kit supplier for the first team. Their. Their academy right this minute. Gear is Adidas gear. But that's because the academy they adapted had a time left on their current Adidas contract. Their. The first team, Athletic Go Dallas, is negotiating with multiple entities. So anyone who tells you they know who the kit supplier is for that club doesn't know what they're talking about because there isn't one yet. [01:14:26] Speaker A: I said this before they started and I'm going to continue to run with it. I would love to see them do a deal with Charlie, the Mexican supplier that does all those really nice League MX kits. [01:14:36] Speaker B: I have not seen a list, so I couldn't tell you whether they are or not. [01:14:38] Speaker C: I'm a humble guy, Peter. I think Hummel has done a good job in the lower leagues, especially with your kind of like wonky, cool designs. [01:14:45] Speaker A: I agree. I've just heard Hummel has a lot of delivery issues. [01:14:49] Speaker C: Oh. [01:14:51] Speaker A: In the past, maybe they've gotten past those. But I would agree. Hummel designs are great. Charlie would just be interesting because of the connection to the Mexican community, because that's a brand from Liga MX that everybody's super familiar with and they do some. By the way, that's the same company that did the very, very good Oakland roots stained glass jersey that I actually own one of. That is such a nice design and I think they would do a knock it out of the park for Atletico, so. But let me also. I'll just throw this in the. The black shirt's so nice. I'm thinking about. Also thinking about buying the. [01:15:25] Speaker B: The. [01:15:26] Speaker A: The blue one, so. Damn. [01:15:27] Speaker C: Really? [01:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:28] Speaker A: The topaz one looks really nice and I think I may have to have both of them, so there you go. I don't know. I don't know what else. [01:15:34] Speaker B: Well, move quick because they're already sold. Sold out in some of the sizes and some of those colors. [01:15:38] Speaker A: I know. And then I gotta go buy the new Burn third jersey because it's so nice too. I'm running out of kit money, so. [01:15:46] Speaker C: It looks really nice relative to those other throwbacks that we kind of saw. Oh, yeah, The Seattle one, the Nashville on the Minnesota. I mean, the Burner looks like the best of those that we've seen. [01:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, the Miami one's really good, but I would say there's a. There's a very good chance that by the time all this is said and done, Dallas may somehow inexplicably end up with the best throwback jersey out of. Out of all the other MLS teams. I think. I think there's a good shot of that. [01:16:10] Speaker B: So. [01:16:11] Speaker C: I do like the Orca, though. I'm not gonna lie on the Seattle. [01:16:15] Speaker A: Who doesn't love them in Orca. All right, well, Armin, I. I feel like we didn't give you a chance to go super full on stats nerd. Do you have one stat you would like to share with the curious that you're just itching to share because you're so awesome? [01:16:29] Speaker C: Just overall. [01:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Just an MLS stat or. I don't Care. I just know you love a stat, so share there your favorite stat. [01:16:35] Speaker C: I don't have a staff at the top of my head, but a team that I've been kind of tracking recently that's had incredible numbers is Nashville, and they've soared up the rankings in the Eastern Conference. Like, their expected goal difference was super high to be in the year, and they were losing games, and people were like, what's going on here? And they've kind of turned it around, especially with that late. The late goal they scored against Philadelphia to win 1 0, so. And I've actually enjoyed watching them play. So not really a stat, but it was kind of predictive, and it's another sign I expected. Goal difference is one of more predictive stats that you'll see within soccer, so keep it on the expected goal difference number because, you know, especially if Dallas's trends worse, then it might be a sign of bad things to come. But if it's, you know, trending in a better direction, then you might see a bit of a turnaround. For Nashville. It was an underlying sign, and people were like, yeah, they'll be good, and they've stored up the rankings. So maybe not the answer you wanted to hear, but something interesting for my beautiful fellow stat nerds. [01:17:36] Speaker A: It was disappointingly, not as nerdy as I was hoping it was gonna be, but thank you. [01:17:40] Speaker C: I try to sift out the nerdiness, you know, don't do that for you. Don't. [01:17:45] Speaker A: Don't hide your nerdom. [01:17:47] Speaker C: I don't hide it. [01:17:48] Speaker A: Fly it, man. That's what we love you for. Thanks for. Thanks for popping on our friend, Armin. Of course you are our friend. [01:17:55] Speaker C: I hope I'm your friend. [01:17:56] Speaker A: You are our friend. You're the. You're. You're my beautiful Persian. All right, Buzz. [01:18:02] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:18:02] Speaker A: I hope your road trip goes well, sir. I hope you. Are you doing another 10 hours tomorrow? [01:18:07] Speaker B: Oh, no, no. Much more normal tomorrow. More like seven or eight. And I admire your ability to squeeze an hour 15 out of that. [01:18:15] Speaker A: I don't know. That's. You guys played a big part in that, too. [01:18:19] Speaker B: Well, thanks. It was a good show. [01:18:21] Speaker A: Okay, we'll keep everybody posted. Keep posting pictures of you and Dairy Queen products, please, sir. [01:18:26] Speaker B: Oh, that's probably only our first day thing, but, you know, I had to go Superman Blizzard. [01:18:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:30] Speaker A: How was the Superman blizzard, by the way? It looks gross. [01:18:33] Speaker B: Well, yeah, the. The ice cream is cake batter, if you like cake batter. It's not my jam, but, you know, they had chocolates of cookie dough in it, which I do like, so. But I saw the big banner and the blue and I thought, oh, that's so fun. [01:18:47] Speaker A: Advertising wins, right? [01:18:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know, winning Rome. Right? So, like it's this huge thing and, you know. [01:18:57] Speaker A: That'S great. Well, drive safely, Buzz. [01:19:00] Speaker B: Thanks, man. [01:19:00] Speaker A: Adhere to local driving laws, please, sir. [01:19:04] Speaker B: I do. Okay. [01:19:06] Speaker A: And don't go to BUC EE's. [01:19:08] Speaker B: I don't. Wow. [01:19:09] Speaker A: All right, Very good. Thank you, Armin. Thank you, Buzz. And thank you, DFW area soccer. Curious person, you. We will speak to you next week, hopefully with something better and more fun to talk about on the next episode. [01:19:23] Speaker B: Of third degree, the podcast only dance.com. [01:19:27] Speaker A: Third degree the third degree n podcast third degree the third degree n podcast Third degree the third degree never gets. [01:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Third degree third degree never. [01:20:04] Speaker A: Sam.