3rd Degree the Podcast #367

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Ready to kiss this pig? [00:00:01] Speaker B: Let's do it. [00:00:01] Speaker A: I'll probably butcher this. Yeah. Woo. Third Degree the third Degree NE Podcast Third Degree the third Degree N Podcast Third Degree the third Degree N Podcast Third Degree. Well, hello DFW curious fans. Boy, howdy do we have a chock full episode tonight. Episode 367 of 30 podcast. I'm Buzz. I am still not Peter. Not for a couple more weeks. Peter's still on post World cup hangover duty. So joining me today is none other than Dennis McCown. Dennis, welcome back to the show for the second week running, my man. [00:00:50] Speaker B: Look at that. I am. You are not Peter. I am not Dan. But we're all you got this week. [00:00:56] Speaker A: Well, you are however, the guy who covers Dallas Trinity for us up close and personal. And I know you are well aware and very close follower of Dallas Athletico Dallas and FC Dallas both. And so you're very knowledgeable about those two topics and can talk to them as well as anybody. So you're in and we're going to talk about all those things and surprise, surprise, surprise. Athletico Dallas has signed their first player and their history and it is an absolutely massive shot of a signing. We will explain why it is massive shot of a signing minute. And there's none other than Chichirito Javier Hernandez himself, the leading scorer in Mexican national team history. One of the all time marquee faces of the Mexican national team and Mexican players. Guy with incredible charisma, Dennis Mali. This is a humongous signing. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Well, we've got a Mexican all star leading a team for their first game at the Cotton Ball. Where have we heard that before? [00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been pointed out by many people, including my friend Peter. The parallels here to 1996 FC Dallas are unquestionable. You cannot deny that it basically is the exact same thing happening over again. FC Dallas 30 years ago went into the Cotton bowl in 1996, signed Ugo Sanchez, the other great famous worldwide talent Mexican striker of the last 40 years, voted CONCACAF Player of the century. Ugo Sanchez was Chichirito of equal magnitude, personality and attention. Also 38. Ugo was I think 39. So you know, these are players that are coming here not because they're in the prime of their careers, but I don't think you can deny that the value here, the bulk of the value here is the name and the attention and the charisma. As the sort of brand ambassador that he has said that he will be for this club. It is amazing. [00:03:04] Speaker B: This has been massive all over town. Every Major outlet has picked this up. ESPN's picked it up. Fabricio Romano broke the news earlier today. It's been everywhere. Across every every outlet, across every local media. Local. Fox picked it up. The, the, the blog posters Dallas miked up and all of them were carrying it. So this is big news across the metroplex. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah. It almost doesn't even matter how good of a player he ends up being. By the way, it's a two year deal with a option for a third year. I'm quite sure they don't go into details. I'm quite sure there will be some kind of long term situation with him here. Past the playing days he has scored absolute boatloads of goals for some of the most massive clubs around the world. But you're right for it's no surprise by the way that they leaked it to Fab this morning and his 50 billion followers rather than somebody like me and my 8000 followers. You know, completely different world people like Hercules Gomez was talking about in terms of like what a hit Chicharito had been on the FOX World cup coverage. How charisma, charismatic he is both in Spanish and in English. Now we know Athletico Dallas even from the name on down. Heavily, heavily marketing to the Dallas Hispanic market. This is a major part of their focus. And listen, I'm the wrong person to ask about Hispanic marketing impact. I am as un Hispanic as it gets. I feel like you are probably somewhat in the same situation. But that doesn't mean that we can't recognize, you know, what a valuable play this would be because we've been through it. I certainly have been through it before. In 1996 we saw the impact of UGAs such as this is going to be the same sort of thing. And, and some people have talked about. I think Peter again quite rightly pointed out that this particular signing and Dallas made us FC Dallas made a signing today too. We'll get to that later. But you can contrast if FC Dallas was signing Chicharito, they'd be getting rightly blasted because he was a couple years passed that level. But you're talking about launching a USL championship franchises. These two clubs are in completely different scenarios. And that's the thing. It's like you can't, I think you can't compare what those two teams are doing because they're so far apart in terms of history, time, situation. They are talent level that they're at. You have to look at Atletico Dallas in the context of what it is. Look at it in the context of Dallas and the Attention this son is going to get. I just think it's just a massive, massive home run of a signing and I think he's going to be plenty good enough for USL championship. And again, it almost doesn't even matter, does it? [00:05:40] Speaker B: No. I mean, this is going to put butts in seats. This is going to sell jerseys. I was looking at some photos that were already up from the event they were having tonight to do the official announcement for the fans, which, by the way, the supporters club got to see the announcement over the weekend and got to hear who it was over the weekend. So really cool on them for doing that for the supporters and letting them get a first look at that and understand, understand, understanding, you know, who their base is and who they're going to. But to your point, leaning into the, you know, Hispanic culture at the event they had this weekend for the, the seat selection event at the Cotton bowl, they had Dallas Low Rider Club was out there with their, their Low riders. They had everything that was being broadcast in the stadium, around the stadium was both in English and in Spanish. They deeply understand that their South Dallas market, that that area around Fair park is heavily Hispanic and they're leaning into it. And this, this just, you know, puts a, puts a stamp on that, that they are leaning into that Mexican culture that, you know, ideally South American, Central American culture that we'll see over the next couple of years. And I think it's a good thing considering the market around the city and, and you know, FC Dallas has not leaned into that at least since moving to Frisco. [00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, Mobile, since the Hunts took over. They've, they've, they've ended their Spanish content and there's ended their Spanish radio mostly. No, not radio, sorry, broadcast. They have the radio show ended, you know, but again, they're different teams, different cultures, different owners, different situations of where they are in the city. That's the thing. We have to think about this in the context of where it is. They know what they've got on their hands. There's going to be a media meet and greet kind of thing, introduction, press conference. There's going to be a fan meet and greet kind of thing coming up this week. There was some implications hidden between the lines in the release that there's going to be a jersey reveal at some point because they were talking about his jersey and his number. Well, then the, the images they put out, he was wearing 14. We know what the number is. So that's the implication. There's something going to come with a jersey eventually. They're going to announce. I imagine this will impact jersey sponsorship, brand sponsorship for the club across the board. This is going to change everything for them with this kind of level of signing number one right out of the gate. It's tremendous. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah, this could shoot them up to be the most popular club in USL right out of the gate or at least one of. And when you think about, you know, bringing in a player like this, bringing in a signing like this and you know, who else might follow, they might not really be looking to compete with mls. Like everybody thinks this might be more of a play to, or at least here in Dallas for Atletico is to compete with League of Mekis. That might really be the, the play here is to compete for that audience that sits home and watches that. I mean there's what, like 8 million viewers a year or something that watch League of Mekis here in the States. Yeah, that's, that's a massive number. That's big audience that they're tapping into that. I don't think USL has really gone after in a lot of markets. I mean they, I'm sure they have in some of the smaller markets, but at this level I don't think it's ever been seen before. [00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we talk about marketing and selling tickets in sports in general with these 30 mile sort of bubbles, you know, and in that context, Athletico doesn't compete with FC Dallas. They have their own sort of area. Like there are, to me, there are three major population sort of groupings in dfw, Metroplex, Fort Worth, Dallas and then what we would call North Dallas, which is like Plano, Frisco, McKen, that kind [00:08:57] Speaker B: of vibe, Greater Colin County, Greater Cullen County. [00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe spilling a little bit into Denton maybe. But like that's the FC Dallas up there. Athletico Dallas is Dallas itself. Right. And in that sense you're right, you are competing with your EPL fans on this, on one side of the spectrum, your Light League MXC on the other side of the spectrum. And this is why that kind of signing is a home run, because it's going to translate in that, in that way. You know, think about the impact he had when he came to the Galaxy, you know what I mean? Like that was, it wasn't Beckham, but it was up there in terms of like the limelight that focused on the galaxy when he was there, you know, and he was not that long after that that he went back to Chiva. So that didn't really work out as he was towards the end of his career. But you know, this is A this is an expansion team coming into USL [00:09:41] Speaker B: Championship looking to go up to the premiere. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah, eventually. But we don't know the Premier League has been announced. [00:09:49] Speaker B: If and when it happens. [00:09:50] Speaker A: We know nothing about when. There's some hypotheticals out there. Will Athletico Dallas be one of the founding groups of that Premier League? They probably hope that they are. But where you're talking about Chicharito probably at least one or two seasons just as a championship player and an expansion team. Right. So you're not going to expect them to walk in the gate and compete for a championship. In the championship. Right. You're going to have a little bit of a build out. So like there's not going to be like oh, you got to score 40 so we can win a title. That's not going to be there, you know. So I just think that like this is a real home run in terms of getting the brand off the ground. And we probably at this point said that a million times because it's. But it's true and it really is fun. [00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know I was at that, that seat selection event on Saturday and you know, like I said, they're leaning into this branding, they're leaning into what they've put together so far and they really are trying to differentiate themselves from what exists out there in the sports market in general. Right. They are trying to be the most bang for your buck. The, the seats are reasonable I think across every price point. I posted the article earlier this week with some of the prices and stuff in it. Get in prices 18 bucks. Like that's realistically. That is how you get people in and then you. There, there's, there's you know, middle seating in the 20 and 30 range. All the way up to the hundred dollar seats that are inside air conditioned clubs which I've been told completely sold out. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Wow. Right. Speaking of teams that Athletico Dallas actually in my opinion does not actually at this time compete against. And that's SC Dallas. There may be a day where these two teams are in competition, but I don't think that is right now. [00:11:22] Speaker B: Can't wait for the US Open cup eventual matchup. [00:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean if they, if they get each other that'd be great. Right now Dallas. FC Dallas doesn't see there. Here's. There's a thing we're gonna have to start calling FC Dallas. FC Dallas. You no longer be able to just call them Dallas. There'll be some confusion there. Have to bring in the FCD or the FCD and all that stuff. All right. So let's move on to FC Dallas. They had a tough week. As I said on this podcast last week, I wasn't sure they were going to get a point at all. They managed to get one. Two very, very difficult games. Portland is a team that. A place that they've only won once. San Diego is rapidly becoming a place where they have not done well either. Even though they only played there like twice. But not the most outstanding week for them. I thought the Portland game was not bad in the context of coming out of the break, everyone else getting, getting a fresh camp, getting up there on the road, tough place to play. They played a more defensive version of the 442 with the. The outside back sitting back the. The wing. The outside mids had some freedom to go forward, but it wasn't this complete flex, dynamic flex like we had seen before. Patterson Delgado had a pretty good game. Patamusa did not start to my surprise, but came in off the bench and then immediately was the difference maker that he always is. Dennis, that goal is amazing. [00:12:41] Speaker B: That was an incredible shot. [00:12:43] Speaker A: Yeah. The overall, I thought a relatively solid performance by FC Dallas. The thing that we're going to set again was the inability to close out games when you're holding onto the lead. That's never easy to do watching the game play out. Portland plays a very, very wide game. They almost overload both wings with two players and go at you. I think that's why they played this sit back, you know, baseline. Basically defensive 442 with the outside mid staying in place. And Delgado in particular put in a real defensive shift. I thought getting back and doing the responsibility he needed to do on his side. It was so it was interesting sort of chess match to watch Quill adapt his formation to go against that almost double wing tactic that Portland employs. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean this kind of felt like Portland stole one late. They, you know, Mora scored in 90 plus two, I think it was, and then immediately decided he was leaving and heading to Mexico. [00:13:43] Speaker A: So yeah, this last play. Right. He was gonna make. Yeah. [00:13:47] Speaker B: That could have made this deal a week before and maybe we would escaped with three points. But yeah, Moussa came on and. And you know that he ripped that one from. And it looked great. Right. Like that's exactly what you want Musa to do, especially coming on late. That's exactly what. What he gets paid to do. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And for the people that would say that he doesn't create his own opportunities. That was such a great play where he did the whole thing himself. He got tired of not getting any help. And, and really that's a symptom of what could be the problem coming out of that game is not getting any enough play up there to the front line and not getting enough help up there to the front line with this sort of more defensive sit back shape. Right. [00:14:27] Speaker B: That was definitely played a lot more defensively than I think I expected in this one. Yeah, I think numbers 77, 71, 72% tackles. One I saw was a. Was a number that was out there which is more defensive than I think we've seen coming into this break or coming. [00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah, we combine it with the game down in San Diego where they again changed up a few pieces, still played a relatively defensive set and got absolutely out soccer by a team that plays Luchi ball. Mikey Varis is Lucci's former assistant. They play Lucha ball. They possess you. They pass you to death. And they did that and they just dribbled the ball and passed the ball around FC Dallas for 90 minutes. This was not a good display that whereas the Portland game I thought you could argue that with even without the ball, Dallas was for great stretches of it, if not 80% of it, the better team. Well, in San Diego that was not the case. They were not the better team at any moment in that game. That was a really poor performance. Maybe not a surprise, but. And I'm going to say why in a minute, when you come off of a two games in four days, when you go from the top of the west coast to the bottom of the west coast, we've talked to death how hard it is to win on the road in this league again. I went in predicting it would be hard to even get a point and they still got was the one point. So Dennis, the San Diego game, not. Not a good game. [00:15:44] Speaker B: This was not easy to watch by any stretch of the means. I mean, they got out past like something like three to one out, possessed two, two or three to one, just outshot, outplayed at every facet of the game. They just did not come to play. And you're right, travel, travel, you know, west coast travel definitely is a little bit difficult. And being able to be on the road that long for a week and a half and you know, they're back out there again next week. We'll get to that in a minute. But yeah, they absolutely got outplayed at every facet of the game by San Diego here. They just, just opened them up. [00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it was ridiculous. I quill did something in this game that I don't like. I mentioned My three things. He twice changed two things to fix one thing. This is the thing that really bothers me in the back line. His hand was kind of forced. They don't have a backup right back. So when he wanted to drop Johansson, because Johansson looked really flat and tired in Portland, admittedly did not have a good game. So I was not. I predicted he would get dropped. Your only option is to bring your starting center back, Shaq Moore, out to right back. So they did that. And that means Sebastian Dibialga has to start. And that's what I mean by changing two things. You removed Shagmur and brought in a new starter. That's changing two things to fix your one thing. Johansson again, that one was forced, but the one that was not forced was wanting to, it seems quite obviously, sit Santi Moreno. Peter Moussa starting. Moreno is on the bench. Okay. If you want some verticality, bring in Sam Sarver next to Moussa. You want some high press, some defensive running, Ron Benjamin can come in, play up there instead. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Benjamin started on the left. [00:17:28] Speaker A: Well, that's what I mean. I'll get there in a second. So your other option perhaps would have been Moose and Farrington together, which did great things in the preseason. Not preseason, excuse me, the first, third of the season. Maybe. Maybe we should get back to that. But what he did instead was take Patrick Delgado and put him up there as the off striker and brought Ben Yamin and it left midfield. So again, Dennis, he changed two things to fix one problem, and that's coming off of Patrick Delgado having tremendous game in Portland and playing really well, deserving to keep his spot in the team. And I think in his position, you put him in a position where he hasn't usually done well except for that one game four months ago. So I did not like what Quill did tactically for this. [00:18:10] Speaker B: This one, yeah, I don't really understand. And we talked about this a little bit and, you know, bringing in Delgado to sit up top because you don't want him ch the game too much. And he's not great getting back defensively. But I think Moreno is the better option, given what they were looking to do here. Moreno is definitely a little bit more creative and he's more creative in and around the box. And I don't think we've seen enough of Moreno to really make a full judgment call on what we've seen since he's been back up here. But that would have been my call at that point. But, you know, we also left off the fact here that we Lost our starting keeper about a third of the way through this one too. Yeah, that's the keeper that they just brought in. And I don't know if the warranty is expired on that yet or we [00:18:52] Speaker A: kept the receipt, but yeah, that's not good. The, the problem, the problem here is with hamstrings in general is it might be a week or two if you're really, really, really lucky. If you're really unlucky. A hamstring can be six weeks or long. Six months even. Six weeks is the typical. But I've seen them go really, really long. You know, like if they come back and say, oh, he tore it, he's out for the rest of the season, that is a viable outcome. I don't think it's likely. The way he walked off, you know, and the way he kind of was just like, oh, and grabbed it and not like screaming like, I don't refuse the stretcher. Yeah, I don't think he ripped it. So I'm not expecting fingers crossed this, this the end of the season or version of the torn hamstring. Hopefully it's a month maybe if we're lucky. Same about the same time that Ramiro apparently is going to be out. Hopefully that'll happen too. [00:19:46] Speaker B: So, sir, what comes in off the bench, gets four saves, gives up the one goal that was from outside, which frankly, I don't really put that on him. And yeah, yeah, I don't think Daniel gets that. Even if he's in goal, if he's healthy, I don't think he gets in there. You just can't give him that much space at the top of the box. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, the biggest, the biggest takeaway for me on this game, and I think you can compare the two games and see this, is that Quill's teams, FC Dallas in general right now and under Quill, they're not, they're not in the part of the table where they have a lot of talent and can win games. They're in the part of the table that has a lot of parody. They need to outwork people and out ex dog people as people, as some of us would say, in order to win games. And the problem with that is when you get tired, when you're on these road trips, maybe when you're playing a team that's going to pass the ball around a thousand times and you got to chase it all game boy, that, that, that X dog fades fast. And if you don't have that, you get a game like this, don't you? [00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there was definite lack of dog here. This was. This was a house, broken, shoved around the back of the house, under the porch kind of dog. This was not the dogs. We've been used to seeing the front half of this season. [00:21:00] Speaker A: And that brings us to the real worry of this. Nine games and nine road games in 10, which is now. We've seen two. So it's now seven games in, nine left on the road. But when you're tr. When you're doing these road trips and you're getting tired and the games are not going in your way, as we just saw one point out of two, Dallas is still a fairly good road team. They're around 500. They're just slightly under 500 now. But that's still. You're going to drop half of these games if you're on peak road form. If it slips at all, it's going to start to go sour. And when that happens, you can get tired of hearing all the time you're getting out worked, you're not working hard enough. You're not fighting, you're not battling. You can get tired of that as a player, and you can get tired of hearing that from the coach all the time. Like every game can't be. We got outworked, man. That can't. That's not possible. You don't get outworked every single game. At some point, you just got out talented, you know, and that's the problem that Quill's gonna have to fight over these next nine games. No, seven, seven road games. Because it was. It was. It was nine of ten, and now it's. It's seven of eight. Wow. My brain. See, speaking of tired, Dennis and losing it up here in the heat and the smoke, it doesn't help. [00:22:18] Speaker B: You got the leagues cup schedule here in the middle. That kind of botches everything. [00:22:22] Speaker A: There's one home game, next eight. So home game point being is that, like, it would be real easy to lose this thing in the next eight games if Quill's not careful. So this will be interesting to watch to see if. If they can't rebound a little bit and start to get a little bit of road action going. How. How south this thing could go. It's. It's. It's something to worry about, in my opinion. [00:22:45] Speaker B: And you're looking at seven games in. In. In 19 days here or 22 days here, right? [00:22:51] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Is it that tight? [00:22:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's Saturday at LA. You got the Leagues cup on Wednesday, the 5th, the 8th. They got Guadalajara in the Leagues cup third Leagues cup game is on the 12th, and then in Austin on the 16th, at Salt Lake on the 19th, and at Vancouver on the 22nd. So all westward road trips, three Leagues cup games messed in there and a road trip to Austin. [00:23:16] Speaker A: So basically twice a week for about a month. Ish. [00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Wow. [00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah, they play 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 games in the month of August. [00:23:25] Speaker A: And so you're not going to get a lot of training time in because you're going to be in recovery mode. Right. So it's gonna be hard to work on stuff. You just came out of your. Your camp, you had in Texas in the heat, so you might be a little tired already. This is gonna be rough. It's gonna be rough, Dennis. I don't know, man. I'm worried about it. [00:23:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Eight. Eight games. None of them in your home stadium. I mean, you got one night when you might be sleeping at home and you got Austin, that you might be able to get home, fire up the PJ and get him home pretty quickly. You know, you can sleep in your own bed that night. But, you know, these are all road trips. These are all away days. These are none of these playing in the facilities you're used to, none of these playing in your home locker room, none of these playing on the field that you're used to playing every day. And you know, there's an entire month of not being home, and that says a lot. That is extremely difficult. [00:24:11] Speaker A: They're going to dig deep in this section. This is gonna be brutal. So let's see if they can come through it. Well, they did. They did get a reinforcement today. They actually have two this week. But the one today I want to talk about first. It's the one that'll be more impactful, quicker, and it's such a. Such a contrast. Again, we don't. They don't need to compete with Athletico Dallas. They're not going to compare them to Athletic Dallas. But it's a fascinating comparison because the player that FC Dallas added today could not be any more different than Chicharito in the sense that his name is Clay Holstad. And Clay has been playing for Rhode island in the USL Championship. Notably, he played for Eric Quill at Texans SC for a little bit. Mostly he's from Birmingham. I believe this is a. Well, on paper, looking him up, his profile, I thought he was a holding mid. And then we had some people that were talking to fans of their team and they talked about how box to box he was and how he scores goals and gets assists. And I said, well, that sounds like an eight. Which is unfortunate because they don't need an eight. They got like 18 eights. They only need. They need a six. So hopefully Quill knows that he can play actually six. He does have a high, high number of tackles and recoveries for a comparative other midfielders in the championship. So that's an exciting statistic. Not I don't like slide tackles, but I like tackles. I like winning the ball, people. I just don't like it when you leave your feet. So this is a player we think that will pencil in as a potential maybe starter, more likely possibly backup six in the midfield, which is not necessarily where I thought they, they need in terms of pure bodies. You don't really need this player other than Romero being hurt. But when I wrote a month ago about how you make this team better, the way you made it better was getting a big time superstar six. This ain't that. But maybe this is the backup. Cross my fingers to the superstar six. That could come perhaps in my little fantasy dream GM land. [00:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, ideally this is the backup six and this is the spiritual replacement for an injured Romero that we don't know how long he's actually going to be out. The guys, the guys mentioned on the Agenda pod this week that he was going to be out somewhere around a month and that was that came out I think on Wednesday. So at least a month from Wednesday, probably longer. We know how this club gets with injury news and how things can, can extrapolate overnight. But I, I kind of like this. This is one of the better players coming out of the championship. I follow the championship a little bit. You know, I'm not watching every USL game, but I'll follow highlights and I'll read some articles here and there every once in a while. But Holstead has, In just under three seasons, he's got the most or second most minutes in club history for Rhode Island FC. 96 appearances, almost 7,500 minutes, 10 goals, 8 assists. Led the team in minutes in 24. And he was on the squad last year that made it to the finals. They played, they won the Eastern Conference and they made it to the finals where they unfortunately lost that one. But this is a high motor guy. This is a guy that is playing, you know, 1,000 miles an hour. He came out of Columbus, he was drafted by Columbus, so he's got some MLS next pro service time where I was also told he once filled in at keeper when their keeper got a red card. So maybe he could play backup, keep. Who knows? Maybe. Maybe this is the fourth keeper to replace Daniel and injured Daniel. Who knows? [00:27:28] Speaker A: Yeah. In my mind, the reason I have been talking about a six is because I would like to see FC House play a four, three, three, which is a single pivot six. Rhode Island, I looked back like five or six games and they play a four, two, three, one, or they have been playing a four, two, three, 1. So he's certainly capable of playing in a double pivot. And when they have Kaik around, or when they have Ramiro around or they have Capis around, maybe those are viable options if. If Holstad's gonna play. The reason I would lean into this trying to get a single pivot six, a guy that could go a sideline to sideline, which if this kid has a high work rate and high range, that could be him, perhaps, is that Dallas has a whole lot of eights and a whole lot of wings. And the 433 allows you to use those eights and those wings, and so it plays into the roster better. But you need this, you need this guy, and you probably need one more if you're really going to switch formations, because then you, you, if you switch formations and this is your only guy, what happens if he gets hurt? So you gotta have to have another one. In my opinion, if you're going to change formations, if you're just going to stick with this 4 2, 4, 42 they're doing, or if you're going to switch it more to a 4 2, 3, 1, which, let's face it, those are the same formations really, you know, this is how you flex them is what makes the difference. You know, then. Then this guy can be in the mix, certainly, but that doesn't allow you to bring in all the eights and wings as much as you might like to. So I think it's a step in [00:28:46] Speaker B: the right direction going back to that 4, 2, 3, 1. I think if you've got a little bit more of a centralized 10, I think that's where Moreno comes in into play a little bit better. Like we talked about earlier, he's a little bit more creative. You know, he could play that kind of classic 10 or playmaker underneath role that typically don't see that much anymore. But I think he's that guy. I think so. I think, you know, what we've seen from him in the past and, you know, when he was down in South America, when he was going down there, he played a lot of. A little bit of Creative playmaker down there. [00:29:17] Speaker A: All right. I tend to think of the players though. I look at the profiles they have. For me, Valiente would be more that guy and then I would probably want to use Marino and his verticality on the wing a little bit, but I'm not the coach, so we'll see what you know. They definitely have been using Moreno as more of an off striker sort of tennis kind of guy than they have as a wing. But Cole hasn't played a wing formation all season, so that's not surprising. [00:29:39] Speaker B: Now to your point, Valiente with his. With his past the Delgado for that goal and the. In the Portland game, that was an incredible look. You know, almost no look pass to his right and just Delgado was wide open and you know, just was able to slot at home there. And that kind of creativity is what really is been. Has been missing up around the box. And you know, Moussa creates a lot of his own shots like you mentioned, but you know, he'd be a lot better with somebody creative off of him being able to deliver the ball. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Matt Doyle wrote that FC Dallas really needed a game breaking 10. A guy, an assist king kind of thing. And I joke to myself, like FC Dallas has a 10 at home, which is the whole discount. Valiente 10. Like he's not a DP 10, he's a discount 10. You know, he. He has those. He has the potential to be a really good player. He does make some magic player passes from time to time. Maybe not out of volume or with a consistency, maybe not with the line breaking on the dribble quite. That would like to see of like a real DP would but I mean he's already outplayed Lucho Costa in a lot of ways in that. In that regard. So, you know. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Yeah, and he is dis. He is deceptively fast. Right. He's got those little legs that just pump out of nowhere and he's just constant. Constantly. [00:30:50] Speaker A: Constantly surprised me how quick he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:30:53] Speaker B: Lateral quickness. [00:30:54] Speaker A: Very bursty. Yeah. It would. I would really relish seeing him if you're going to go with a double pivot. I would really relish seeing him freed in front of a good double pivot. You know, not. Not stuck having to sit because Kaik's occasionally going to go bonkers like he does, but being able to really be free in front of a real double, that would be kind of interesting to see. Again, I. I kind of lean towards the eye of going idea of going with a single and having like a double eight. Kind of look, because I think Valiente is probably a little more of 8ish than he is 10ish perhaps. You know, we see him play defense on the wide place spots. Right now this is a little semantic. We're getting into like minutia, but, you [00:31:32] Speaker B: know, is that not what we're here for? [00:31:34] Speaker A: It is, it is. This podcast is for like, at some point though, you could get to so many different scenarios. You're like, what about this? What about that? Well, that all sounds awesome. If you can get, we'll need to see if this kid Holstad's any good first or if they need to go with a DP. Man, I, a DP6 is crazy, but I almost wish they had a guy like that because if you had a guy that could dominate the midfield all of a sudden, you'd feel a lot better about your center backs feel a lot better about all these eights you have that occasionally get lost playing defense. I mean, all of them do. Campus did in this last game. Kai does quite often. You know, it's like Benjamin is not dialed in yet as like a six or an eight, either one, you know, so some guys with potential, Swan, I mean, Swan will lose playing time here, but that's okay. I'm actually okay with him going back and playing a bunch of North Texas playing more because right now, like he's moved into the rotation with FC Dallas, he's way down the rotation, is not playing. So like at some point, like, okay, you're bringing a couple veterans, maybe kick him back down for the rest of this season in North Texas. That's fine. [00:32:31] Speaker B: I think we, I think we might see a world where you got Cass and this kid Holstead in the middle. You've got two Quill guys, two Quill country boys just kind of sitting in the midfield there, locking it down. That might be what he's looking for to control the action out of the middle there. I, I, I joked earlier today, but Holstad is a, you know, when he is defensive, he's almost like Kai with discipline. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And I wouldn't mind, I, I think Kaik has a ton of potential. I wouldn't mind sitting him in the short term with Ramiro out, because when Romero's not in there to organize and to keep him in check because he speaks the Portuguese, you know, so like without him, Kaik is a mess. So, like, I wouldn't mind tapping the brace a little on cake until Romero comes back and then you can make some of the harder decisions about who you're going to play with and we [00:33:17] Speaker B: just looked at the schedule, right? You're going to need to rotate regardless. You're going to double match weeks and there's going to be a lot of rotation in the midfield, especially if you've got guys that are high motor that are going to be running up and down the field. And this kid Holstad is supposedly a guy that covers a lot of ground. So if he's covering a lot of ground, racking up a lot of miles and a lot of minutes out here, he's going to need to spell and he's going to need to spell others. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Two games a week in the hottest part of the year. Quill's teams work really hard. They run a lot. Shaq Moore is up there in distance covered because of how much he's running. So yeah, a body in there that covers a lot of ground doesn't hurt. So the other player that FCD signed this week in some ways is significantly bigger news. It got all over the local news stations for a couple of days until Chicharito stole all the oxygen out of the room. And that is none other than Benji Flowers. Now if you have not been paying attention or don't follow this podcast enough, Benji Flowers is the hottest, best talent to come through the academy since Ricardo Pepe. This is a Cal player of the potential in the neighborhood of Pepe and the neighborhood of Weston McKinney. Now he's 15 so we don't know what ceiling he will hit, but this is the kind of guy that this club has signed him at 15 and he was scouted by all kinds of European teams including Chelsea, who have apparently by all reports, and I have no reason to deny this, signed him to a pre agreement to transfer him, sign with Alidos, transfer him at 18 to Chelsea. Now they could of course walk away, but this is the same sort of deal that Kevin Sullivan has signed with Philly and Man City. So this is a player that is very, very exciting right now. He just got done Dennis and you tell us how he did in the MLS next pro which is the he's playing with MLS next. Oh sorry. [00:35:05] Speaker B: This is the next All Star game. [00:35:07] Speaker A: This is the Academy kids. MLS next All Star game which is where he played most of his time. Up until about a month ago. Benji Flowers did as a 15 year old. He played all this spring with the U18 team, trained with North Texas all the time, made his debut with North Texas. They signed him to a homegrown deal, not a hybrid deal, straight full blown homegrown deal. In fact, I bet you see him on the field for I see Dallas before the end of the year. It won't be a lot, but I bet you'll see him. But remember that he is 15. Even Ricardo Pepe, as hyped as we all were, did not really become impactful for the first team until he was 18. So Benji's going to play a lot at North Texas SC more than he is FC Dallas in the get go. But he's already training pretty much full time with SC Dallas. This is a player to be very, very excited about. A slashing, attacking wing. What makes him special is like his mentality, his competitiveness, his nose for goal. Spectacular athlete. I don't say that as a cliche. His older brother is a standout defensive back for Oregon and just played in the national championship. Phenomenal player. Benji is an equivalent level of athlete. This guy's spectacular athlete. So I think it's a name that is not going to have instant impact with Seattle, but over the next two to three years you're going to see him break into the team. We think everybody thinks just like Ricardo Pepe did. [00:36:33] Speaker B: You just said that there's. You expect them to play with the first team by the end of the season, at least get some minutes. And one of the things that was reported is that part of the incentives with the Chelsea deal have to do with his MLS minutes. So the more minutes he plays, the cost goes up. I think it was reported something like it was a $3 million base deal up to 10 million with incentives, including those those MLS minutes incentives. So y that's really interesting to that there's. If he's good and he's able to gobble up some minutes here, I think there's an opportunity for him to really crank up the value for himself here and for the club to crank up his value by playing him. If he is worth playing now, I don't think Quill or anybody else is going to just shove him in a lineup for the sake of shoving him in a lineup. He's going to have to earn a spot. But just watching him at the next All Star game he got on in the second half. They started a whole. [00:37:27] Speaker A: Both. [00:37:27] Speaker B: Both sides started a second squad in the second half. So he was on the second half roster. They were already down five nil when he came on, so there really wasn't much in the way to talk about there. But he had a couple runs up the up the side there and he's Pacey and he's got some some good moves and you know it's, it's MLS next, so there's not a lot to go on there. But he looked good for the the time he was out there and the time I was able to watch the feed before the next YouTube channel just completely went black and went color bars. Because this is a massive league that spends a ton of money on video production and all that other stuff. [00:38:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:04] Speaker B: The one thing I am really interested to see what happens with Flowers too is he is technically has US and Mexico eligibility. So does we will see where that takes us. Obviously we, we we meaning you and I would love to see him play for the US but we know we have some listeners here that would definitely be interested in seeing him play for Mexico. [00:38:24] Speaker A: Now if you if you're wondering why FC Dallas would do a deal like this, working with somebody like Chelsea, well, [00:38:30] Speaker B: $10 million is a is a good reason. [00:38:32] Speaker A: The answer is, is that you don't want to have him at 18 years old walk away for nothing. That happened with Julian Eyestone. It happened with Weston McKinney SC. Dallas has been burned by this. They sold Chris Richards for way too little. When you have a player that's desired like this, you put together a deal like this. Yes, they sold somebody like Justin Che for more like 3 million. Well, that's the baseline. This is a player of a much higher potential than the 3 million. You're assuming that he's going to come good with a potential ish in the Pepe neighborhood. That means he's going to be impactful at FC Dallas before he's gone at three years from now. So you're making a calculate a bet that at a minimum you're going to get some Justin J kind of money, which is better than zero and you might get three or four times that if he comes good like Pepe came good. Now the downside is you're not going to get your Pepe 20 million, but you've taken the risk out by getting a minimum of 3 million and that's why FC Dallas would do a deal like this. In the meantime, you pay the player through this period where he may not be ready for your first team yet, but he gets compensated. So he gets a little something in return for giving you this leverage to get money out of Chelsea when you might not get zip. [00:39:52] Speaker B: And beyond just the financial aspect of it, this puts a little shine back on the academy. You know, we talked about this a little last week in context of the US national team, but beyond that, you guys have talked about this A few times lately. But the academy is not where it was five, six, seven, ten years ago. Right. And now you've got Atletico coming up with their own academy. There's competition here at the local level. There's, you know, several academies across the state now that have gotten bigger. There's several academies in the region that have gotten bigger. So they need to put a little bit of shine back on this if they're going to restore the academy to its former glory. [00:40:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Now Benji is a 2011. The last homegrown that came through and has done anything is Nolan Norris, who's a 2005. Now there have been a handful of sixes and sevens and eights that have been signed that are in the process of coming up to the first team in various stages of success. There are players that will be good professionals and they'll be good professionals for fast between Nolan and Benji, they don't have the super high upside of Benji, who again is in the Pepe territory. But there are a grouping of players that I think are going to be professionals that are in between them. This is not a complete. It's not a drought between the two. And as we go forward, as we always do, as I always do, we'll be covering those kids. And with a lot of them we talk about in North Texas. You've seen Josh Torcato, for example, with the first team. Everybody knows who he is. He's a 2007 Jaden. Jaden Contreras, who's right now. He and Josh are Both with the U20 national team. Also a 2007 Treas usually is with Honduras, but he declined their invite and he to stay home. And then the US Called. He goes, oh, maybe I will go to the U20s. So a little bit of a controversy there. He has in the past been with Honduras. Nico Montoya, the North Texas goalkeeper, is with Columbia. Columbia right now. But those are just friendlies. Those are not part of the CONCACAF U20s. But anyway, another example, Montoya of a name. So like, don't. We're not saying that like there's nobody between Nolan and Flowers. Flowers is just a peppy level big deal that they've signed him. They've already signed a kid named Sam Setta, who I think is phenomenal, who's a year older than or maybe a year and a half older than Flowers. And he's in the middle of the transition. There's other guys that are coming through. There's other guys that'll be signed to homegrown or hybrid in the next Two years I've done them in my rankings of who should be signed so. But anyway, let's not get too sidetracked. Flowers, huge deal. Just to show that there still is big value coming through the F. Dallas Academy. Not going to be impactful this season with FC Dallas. If you're interested in this player, watch North Texas. He should play quite a bit with North Texas. Now they've actually signed him. Not that he wasn't already, but he'll play even more. Okay, let's move on to our last topic. Oh sorry. We have to finish to close the book on FC Dallas. They have a game this weekend against LA Galaxy so let's look ahead. Coming off of the San Diego game, Dennis. Oh geez. I think obviously you want Peter Moussa up top. That seems like a no brainer. Delgado up top did not really work. So let's come back to that spot. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is for, for me. I think there's an opportunity to put Moreno in but go, go on. [00:43:12] Speaker A: Yeah, let's come back to that discussion. Let's talk about the locks first. Right. If you're continuing with the 442 we assume they are. Valiente will still be in there, right Bid at this point I assume Kaika Kappas is happening in the central midfield because Benjamin means not ready to carry a load in there and and Ramirez still hurt. The new guy will have been here like for three sessions. That's not going to get him in. He might be on the bench though. Left mid. We'll come back to that one too because that'll depend on whether what Delgado is doing I think. And then Norris across the back irrigate more. Here's the next question. Well, let's go to the loop first. Obviously Cereal or collode? I think it's going to be cereal unless Daniel turns out to be hurt. Not at all. Which I think is very unlikely. So probably Cereal starting in clothing on the bench based on the fact that Cereal has been on the bench for with Daniel. Which leaves us two real question marks. Do you bring Dennis Johansson back at right back or do you stick with Shaq more in Ibiaga? [00:44:10] Speaker B: Well what do I do or what do I think Quill does? Cuz I think totally different things. [00:44:14] Speaker A: Very valid questions. What do they. What do you think? Both of those things. [00:44:17] Speaker B: So I, I think. I think Quill's going to bring Johansson back for this one. I think the Iago combination didn't work on the right side as well as I think we would have liked to have seen and you know, unfortunately it. That is the open question is right, do we, do we need a center back? Do we need a right back? Do we need both? We need one or the other and they need to fill that hole at some point, right? Because Shaq is one person, right as Shaq Morris. One human being that can't play two positions unless you go to a back three. Which doesn't seem like they want to do again, but that might completely mix things up again. But I think Quill brings Ohansen back and puts Shaq back at center back. Now if it were me. And again it depends upon what goes on and what the load is like in that U20 CONCACAF tournament we just talked about. Why not bring. Let Shaq play right back, move Osaze over, put Nolan at the left center back and let's recato play left back. [00:45:10] Speaker A: Well, the problem for me in that, in all that discussion is is pencil. Now they don't have. They don't have Peck. I don't believe. I think he's hurt or he's leaving. I can't wait. Reese as the, you know, their 9ish kind of guy, I think you got to handles him. It's pencil that's the problem. The last game, last time they played the Galaxy, you remember, they flipped his side. Actually they saw who Dallas put out and they flipped him and they put him on the left. So I think they'll be reactive with that guy because he is right about the fastest player in the league. If he ain't the fastest, he's at least right there in the conversation. So that's a problem because Johansson has got okay speed for the whole field, but isn't quick like 5ft quick and isn't quick on the turn neither is Nolan. So like you almost might be stuck trying to keep Shaq Moore in there where you think he'll do the most effective job against pencil. So like it's hard to lock down for me like what they're going to do. I think he might actually keep more out there with in Ibiaga just because of their most dangerous attacker is going to be pencil. [00:46:18] Speaker B: And to. To answer your question, Peck is gone. He was sold to Cruzeiro for. On July 7th for a club record 13 and a half million dollars. [00:46:27] Speaker A: I knew there were reports that they were talking about it, so I couldn't remember whether. And I feel like he got hurt right before the break too. I knew the reports were out there. I wasn't sure if it was done. So I think you don't obviously don't worry about him, but pencil still is a problem coming up. That's that side. And they got some guys coming out of the midfield too. Or Yamini out of the right back also. I think it's pretty pacey. So, you know, they also just brought [00:46:50] Speaker B: in ex Celtic striker Kyogo Furahashi. [00:46:56] Speaker A: Yeah, but would he walk in and play? I don't, I don't know. That's a good some interesting questions about what you think Ellie's gonna do. The other big question other than the back line is obviously the off striker. Do you bring Santi Moreno back in? Do you like what Delgado did for you up top? I did not. Do you bring back Logan Farrington and let him and Musa play together as a comment which I thought worked really well earlier in the year. But Quill has seems to not like it for some reason. You know, if you, if you keep Delgado up top, who plays left mid, do you stick with Benjamin out there? I didn't think he was great when I thought Delgado was great. So I think there's some questions there. Dennis, what do you think? [00:47:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there are definitely questions. I don't think you run Farrington and Moussa out there only because there is no third striker. There is Anderson. Julio is not a viable option as far as I'm concerned at any of these positions. He hasn't shown anything from anywhere. I think it left midfield. Quill might run out Bernie again. I think we might see that he came. Bernie came on very late in the San Diego game. Didn't really show much, but we know how much Quill loves him. Some Bernie Mongo's appalled. [00:48:01] Speaker A: I don't like Bernie out there. I thought Bernie was atrocious. [00:48:05] Speaker B: I, I, I think so too. But you know, Quill really seems to like him and you know, Quill loves his guys and that's what we're seeing here and that's what we're seeing with signings and that's what we're seeing with, with what, what the build of this team is so far. So I would not be shocked to see Quill run him out there again. I think we need to figure out what we're doing with Anderson Julio. If they're, if he's, if he's not a body that's going to make this lineup, then what the hell are we doing with him? Is it time to exercise one of these buyouts? I don't know. [00:48:34] Speaker A: Regard to Anderson, Julio, I think you're right that like, I don't think, I don't Think FC Dallas is done. This window's open until September. I think they might. Maybe they'll wait a week, couple weeks and see like how it's going. Because, like, if this thing's cratering out, maybe you don't, but I think that they really should be. It will behoove them to go after some thing or two here in this window. If you wait the next window. Remember, this is the window when there's more things available, right? More guys are free, teams are looking to move, make changes. Guys have been circulous requirements, teams are making deals all around the world. This is the window that has more step action than the next one. [00:49:09] Speaker B: And I think this goes back to what you said earlier about having to fix one problem, solve one problem with two moves. If you want to run shack it right back to you, maybe run Johansson up at right mid and then move Valiente up into the off striker. There's an option for you there. [00:49:23] Speaker A: I like that option. We've not seen that, though. It makes me reluctant to predict it. Well, that's. Strangely enough, that's an option we've not seen. We've not seen Johansson play right midfield much. [00:49:32] Speaker B: We've seen him play and he's got. Got zero defensive back experience. So you would think it would make more sense to see him at least in a midfielder or a forward winger position as opposed to playing a defensive back. [00:49:44] Speaker A: Well, you know, at the beginning of the year they had success with the back three because Bernie was doing a decent job at wing back and Johansson was going back on the other side. Then Bernie got hurt, you know, and there was no other wing back and so he changed to this four. Well, if it's not going really well, we did see the back three with two wing backs at the end of the last game. Could they go back to that back five, which worked well at the beginning of the year? Then you're. Then Bernie's in and then it all makes a lot of sense. Then you're playing with a double pivot, you know, like you would expect to be. And then you can maybe have your Delgado moose of Farrington front three, you know, or your Valiente moose of something else. If that's your cup of tea, you know, then your double pivot doesn't have to go side on the side. I can just be tight. So maybe there's something to be said for back three Watch returning now that Bernie's playing his way into the fold. [00:50:27] Speaker B: Question marks abound. [00:50:28] Speaker A: Yeah, well, when you're losing games and you got a coach that Likes that tries to change things up and looks for solutions. Just doesn't run the same every time. You know, it wouldn't surprise me to see something quite different happen. You know, catch LA sleeping and throw out maybe the three at them. And then because that changes, that would give you an extra body to. And it would tighten the spaces in the back five against pencil. [00:50:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that gives you the option to run Johansson up into. You can. You can run forward with Johansson and have Shaq flex out to that wide back. [00:51:02] Speaker A: Yeah, Johansson's in a much more natural wing back spot for him. Bernie's in a much more functional wing back spot for him. I mean, he's better obviously as a pure wing, but he did a decent job one on one on the outside, you know, that would allow him to deal with. If you're talking about la, you know, Miller or Yamini coming at him from that right side of them. If pencil's switched over, you know, and they're overloading the wing back. Some possibilities there, I think that need to be considered. Okay. I think we've sort of beaten all those options to death. Let's now move on to the team that also added a whole bunch of players this week without doing any announcements, and that's Dallas Trinity. And we only know that Dennis, because you went to the scrimmage and you saw a bunch of players that. We know who they are and they wouldn't have played if they weren't under contract. So let's first talk about Dennis because you saw it. The scrimmage against Casey Current 2, which is the WPSL side. First game under lead win. How did they look? What was the tactics? What was the style? Give us a, give us a scout on the new Dallas Trinity. [00:52:03] Speaker B: So formation was very much the same. What we've seen from Petrocelli and Thackeray prior to this, it was still very much that kind of 4, 2, 3, 1, 4, 2, 1, 3, whatever you want to call it with the wing backs or your fullbacks flexing out, overlapping and getting forward. However, they kind of played slightly differently in the two halves. Two different lineups. They rolled out a full new 11 for the second half and we'll get to that in a second of who was in what position, who played where. But this was really aggressive, really, really high line. At one point, I think there was only one defender behind the center circle. Everybody was forward, everybody was in the, the attacking half. There were, you know, seven or eight players in the attacking third at any given time. You had the wing backs flying over [00:52:52] Speaker A: the high press or high block? [00:52:54] Speaker B: High block. [00:52:55] Speaker A: High block, yeah, high. [00:52:56] Speaker B: High block. It was a little chaotic in the midfield given that, you know, these players really all haven't played together too much. Obviously they've been. Yeah, they've been training together for, you know, weeks. And really, realistically, that's probably just a few days. But they were very, very high line. The defensive line was way, way up and they were really getting into the attacking third from every. I think almost every player on. On the outfield 10 got into the attacking third at one point or another. What was really interesting is. And to start getting into that conversation of who played where Jasmine Hamid played the nine. She started out up top for this in what looked like a high nine to begin with, but as the game kind of went on, she sort of drifted out wide and she would drift to the left or drift to the right. And when she would drift to the left, Cam Lancaster, who was up on the top left, would come in if she drifted to the right. It was actually seven. Castane, who started up on the right side, that was the new signing that was announced a week. A week or two ago. [00:53:54] Speaker A: Fair to call him. He had a false nine, that kind of game. [00:53:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was almost a wide false 9. It wasn't like your traditional under striker or. Or under the 10, false nine that you would say. And they did do that occasionally with. With Misimo getting up there in the 10 and getting up behind her, but she was getting behind the wing backs more than anything else from what I was seeing. So it was like a wide false nine is what I would call it. [00:54:17] Speaker A: How did Mismo look? [00:54:19] Speaker B: Okay. Nothing to write home about. Nothing spectacular. A couple key passes, a couple of decent actions throughout the game. Didn't really stand out. Didn't really jump out at me. Yeah, just more of. I think the same. A little bit tighter, a little bit more precise than we saw towards the end of the season, but much more of the same where we ended up at the end of last season. [00:54:42] Speaker A: All right. And we saw five new faces, I believe it was that we didn't have down being on the roster until we saw them in this game. [00:54:49] Speaker B: Yes. So the first half we saw, we had. We. First of all, before we talk about those notes, one thing that was, and it's really interesting, was playing center back and wearing the armband was signing that was announced Sophie Braun, the Argentine national. So watching her with the armband and playing at center back, considering she's played defensive mid most of her career, was pretty interesting to watch. But she looked really comfortable and played really well and was really organizing back there. But we did discover Kayla Eichenberger. For those of you who've been following social media, there was a post a couple of weeks ago from the Den which is the supporter bar for Atletico Dallas and USL Dallas and it's now going to become a Trinity supporter bar as well. They posted a picture of Jasmine Hamid, Sam Morton, Matt Valentine with two players and just said Dallas Trinity in the house. Those players turned out to be Matty Anderson, the goalkeeper who started the first half and who we've now identified as Kayla Eichenberger, who is currently under a one year contract or rookie contract with Utah Royals. [00:55:53] Speaker A: Yeah, this is a player who in college was a striker. She's tall. I think she's almost 6ft tall, if not 6ft tall. The thing that's going to drive me bonkers is that she wears the number nine. And Dennis, what position did she play? [00:56:07] Speaker B: She was playing right back. [00:56:08] Speaker A: Right. So number nine, she thinks she's a striker. She thinks she's a high striker. She played. [00:56:13] Speaker B: She did score the opening goal. [00:56:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Now you know if you're going to play a modern system, you're going to overlap, that's fine. But like watching her right back where number nine just drives me bonkers. But that's okay. I'll. I'll try to move past it. Who else did we see? [00:56:26] Speaker B: Dennis that was new we saw in midfield alongside new signing Chris Bachman was formerly of Spokane. Felicia Knox in the deep midfield. [00:56:36] Speaker A: Yeah, Felicia is a player that was on my short list of players. I actually would like to see Dallas Trinity add. She's a box to box eight. She's very similar in my mind to same Brook who we quite like has a little something special from time to time. A good player, a talented young player. I quite like her. I think she's. She's been in this league for a couple of years. That's a really good pickup in my opinion. [00:56:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I think she's going to be a solid midfielder that get can. I think she can play the box to box role a little bit. I think she can lock down and defend when necessary. But you know, like I said, everybody was getting forward here, so she was up, you know, at the top of the box. Most of the time that they were in the attack they played, like I said, pretty aggressively up top. The other interesting point there is Eichenberger was on the right side and right back and playing at right center back with Sydney Cheeseman. So we've got the cheeseburger back line. [00:57:28] Speaker A: Cheese. So, so bad. I mean, so good, but also so bad. [00:57:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And so they. They came out in the second half and switched things up a little bit here. Formation remained the same, but they played a little bit more deliberate around the back. Passing the ball around the back, coming out of the go a little bit. And then we got ourselves a new goalkeeper in net for the second half. And we were able to identify this keeper as Niku Purcell, currently with Seattle rain and a USU 23 goalkeeper cap. I believe she was in the camp with Misimo and Cheeseman into last year. Right. [00:58:08] Speaker A: I think. I think that's the team she was in. She actually came through the then ol Reign Academy. Now that's the Seattle ran and then played in college and then it's now back with them. So they obviously think very highly of her. This is a player probably that needs playing time, but has been through every Youth national team, 16 to U23. So, like, it's a player that's clearly highly thought of. So this is not equivalent to Estrada here as a backup, where Estrada was only playing in an emergency. This gives them two legit number ones. So that's a real competition and is exciting. If you. If you think that's important. I do. Then that's an exciting development. [00:58:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And considering that we've been told by any stretch of the means that this roster was put together largely by Petrocelli and Nathan Thackeray, I trust Thackeray's ability to identify a solid goalkeeper. That was his role at North Carolina, that was his role at unc. [00:58:59] Speaker A: The caveat to that is that I'm pretty sure when Thackeray and Petrocelli left that they only had one keeper. And the fact that this keeper is from Seattle, which is where Lee Nguyen was, pretty sure that I'm going to give this signing credit to Lee Nguyen for bringing in this keeper, which is. No, you're totally right about Thackeray and keepers, they've done a great job. Petrocelli, too, with the keepers they've had here. But I think this one's for Lean win. [00:59:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, Tyler McCamey was just officially announced this week going to Barcelona. So, you know, that's a. That's a huge deal for her and for the club and for the league. Frankly, that somebody played half a season here in this league and is now vying for the number one spot at Barcelona, the best club in the world. [00:59:38] Speaker A: Two more players, I think, Dennis, on our list of. [00:59:41] Speaker B: Yes, yes, we've got two more. Starting at left back was Drew Cummins, who was announced a couple of weeks ago as well. And she lined up alongside her former Princeton Tiger teammate Heather McNabb, who I believe you were able to identify recently or called out on your short list. [00:59:57] Speaker A: Yeah, we, we especially spotted her because she was at North Carolina Courage is where Thackeray used to be. And then she signed a short term deal with them and he actually gave her her debut. And then she did not stay with them in 2025. And her social media had multiple pics of her on the sideline of Trinity games. I was like, oh. And then I noticed like all the people that were following her who her agent is and like, okay, this is a player that's coming to Dallas Trinity on paper. Her profile everywhere I looked says forward in this game. She played center back though, so that's interesting. [01:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah, everything that, that I noticed that in her files, everything we were able to find. Yeah, she has mostly played forward her entire career, but she looks solid in center back role. And you know, she and Kumins look like they've played together pretty often. And I do believe they were both at Princeton the same time. Tyler McCamey and I believe all three of them were on the squad that won the Ivy double. So this is a solid squad coming out of Princeton that have all played well together. [01:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah, McNabb's 510, by the way, which for a female professional is pretty big. That's good. Center back size. So. All right, who else do we have here? [01:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we had Ali Cook up top and then the, the undefined. The, the other name we were able to. The other name we were able to identify in the midfield was Jamie Shepard, formerly of Bay fc. [01:01:18] Speaker A: I don't know very much about this player. She's been with them for three years now. Bfc. Not played a ton. I'm assuming she's just sort of a central mid of some kind. Like what kind of role does she play in this game, Dennis? [01:01:31] Speaker B: Oh, she was playing a lot of the same role Knox played in the first half. So she was in a, a sort of box to box midfielder, locking down on defense when necessary, sliding into the back line when necessary, and then playing up in the attacking third when necessary. It was all very fluid like we saw from Trinity the end of last season. Right. It's, it's a, it's a very fluid formation. You know, not really a true, you know, total football game, but there's a lot of rotating in and out and midfielders coming up into the attacking third and defenders coming up into the midfield and, you know, fullbacks overlapping and coming up around the side. So, you know, from what we saw from shepherd, though, she was in the midfield pretty often and held it down pretty well. So we've got several new names that we've discovered out here and the rest were. From what I was made to understand, the rest of the players that we were not able to identify were all academy prospects. So they are not currently signed to the academy. And the way it was explained to me is that players will now have to train with the first team before they are awarded an academy contract. So they will need to train with the first team, practice with the first team, and if they are good enough, they will be an award and academy contract. [01:02:41] Speaker A: All right, I have one question about players and tactics that I want to get your take on from that game and it's related to Cheeseman. Cheeseman, I thought last year did a terrific job as a six. Her first touch is quite nice. Her ability to turn dribble to relieve pressure, make a linking sort of pass quite nice. A little bit not experienced in that spot. Mostly is played as a center back, but I thought she looked really good. Well, this game back, she's back at center back. So did somebody, and I'm going to guess maybe it's Bokeman. Was or was it. Was it more? So were we looking at a straight sort of six kind of player in Bokeman or is the Bokeman Knox more of a double eight kind of look? And then how was Cheeseman at center back or should we be begging for her to go back into Midfield as a 6? [01:03:33] Speaker B: So Bachman and Knox sort of felt like a double pivot with them sort of switching off and one of them getting forward at given opportunity. Yeah, Cheeseman looked really solid on the back line and this was her natural position. She played a little bit of outside back in college too. She played fullback on both sides as well as center back. So this was. This is where her natural defensive position is. And she's another one that's kind of tall too. So she plays well on the back line. And I think she paired up really well with Sophie Braun. The two of them sort of held it down and one of them would get forward while the other one stayed home and stayed centrally at home. They were. Communication between the two of them was excellent. More than I think we saw from across that backline all season. Even with Amber Wisner calling it on the back line. I don't think we Saw that cohesiveness between players. Yeah, Amber had some great, great moments, great plays, but there was not that cohesiveness across the back line, which I saw instantly in just a few minutes of a scrimmage. Really, one half. [01:04:28] Speaker A: Yeah. We should be mentioning that Sophie Braun is an Argentine national team stalwart. She's from America. She's from the Pacific Northwest, from Washington. So it's not like she doesn't speak English and it's. [01:04:39] Speaker B: She only learned Spanish when she went to go play for the Orange team. [01:04:42] Speaker A: Right now, the thing is, is she played as a center back. Well, we know that this team has Flynn who is hurt, but when Flynn is healthy, she also is in that conversation. You, you said specifically, and I know this is true, that Braun generally is more of a six than a center back, but this is going to be up to the coach here. Does Cheeseman and Flaw and Brown both we like as sixes? One of them is maybe more of a six than the other. How does Flynn work into this conversation? Is Cheeseman going to be more of a center back? There's some nice choices to be made here, especially when you consider, like, do you need a shape that Has a Pier 6 or not? You also have Winnie Balata, who's going to come back from injury at some point that she sustained right at the end of last season. You have Stainbrook, who was the arguably Trinity's best player last year, who's an 8, also could factor in there. So, you know, whether they stick in a 4, 2, 3, 1 or go more of a 4, 3, 3 with a double 8 look might depend on whether what Missimo's doing on any given game. So Lee Lynn has a lot of choices to be made here. There really is maybe one center back short still. I'm counting if you count Braun as a center back, you have Flynn and you have achievement. I'd like to see four, and that's if you count Braun as a center back. So I still think that there's a need here at center back. Maybe you're going to have two academy backup center backs. That feels a little thin to me. [01:06:02] Speaker B: Or are they going to use McNabb as a center back? [01:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Or is McNabb going to be a center back and not a forward? So, you know, McNabb, of those names, is the one that's going to have the least amount of experience. But again, good size. One of the things that's a knock on Flynn is she's a little undersized as a center back. She can play wide on either side as well. Not as a flying defender but as a regular sort of defender. So there's lots of options at play here, a lot of flexibility but still lean away and has some options and it'll be interesting to see over the next couple of games and probably even Dennis. Let's be fair like most of this fall season as Lee Nguyen is working with a roster and Brian Cork is working the roster that they didn't build most the of of. How do they use players who becomes part of their rotations? Who does it seem like they like, don't like? There's a bunch of loans in here. How many of them are going to be just a short term to just get them through this season versus the ones that are going to be sticking around? Those are some interesting questions. So this fall little mini season for Trinity is going to be fascinating, you know, to watch maybe. I actually like the look of this team. I think short of like the questions at 9 like do you go with a more of a mobile Hamid or you go more of the traditional like high nine like Ali Cook, you know some good, some lots of possibilities with this talent. I think this talent, this roster is actually deeper than anyone we've seen before to be fair. [01:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is the best constructed roster as far as what we've seen so far and the names we have in front of us. I think this is the best constructed roster we've seen so far. There's a lot of fringe NWSL talent here. There are lonies that haven't gotten a ton of minutes up top or have been around NWSL teams and and haven't gotten minutes. The other name that we didn't bring up, we mentioned Ali Cook up at the top for the second half but playing behind her in the ten was Juliet Moore. [01:07:54] Speaker A: Oh yeah. How does she load you? [01:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, she was, she was connecting really well. Like I said the second half they were playing a lot more defensively. They were playing same high line, same sort of get forward. When they get forward and spring forward on the attack with the counter very quickly but they were passing it around the back, passing it back through the goal much more often. So there's a lot less link up play. It was, it was much more just kind of passing around. Current you can see we're kind of running out of gas too. And current we're coming in off of, you know just a week ago, Current two rather they were coming in just off a. I think a week ago they won the WPSL championship. So they're at the tail end of their season. Probably running out of gas there. Uh, interesting note, uh, starting and covering 85 minutes at the left wing for current two was former Trinity forward Caroline Kelly. [01:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, a relatively fast player. She did not get a ton of starts for Trinity last season, but was a player I think they probably had hopes for giving her pace, but she just didn't crack in enough. [01:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah, she had a couple shots on goal as well. Neither keeper was really tested in this one there. Everything was mostly routine saves. And the second goal, Trinity did go on to win this 2 nil. The second goal was scored by an unidentified left winger, who I believe was another academy tryout. So maybe we'll see who that is if and when she gets signed to the academy. [01:09:13] Speaker A: Well, the most important thing for me, Dennis, from this game is that despite the fact that Trinity wore their solid black training uniforms with no numbers on them, which chaps me to no end, they still had the mismatched socks with the white socks, which I love so much. My favorite thing about Trinity is the mismatch socks. I love that bit. I really hope they keep it and I hope this scrimmage is a sign [01:09:36] Speaker B: that they are, because I just hope they start putting numbers on jerseys for scrimmages because it is very hard to pick players out, especially when you're staring into the 6:37pm sun at. Over there at Dallas Soccer park, just staring directly into the sun, trying to pick players out. [01:09:54] Speaker A: Let's be honest, it's dumb. Yeah. We've already identified all these players. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, you're not tricking anybody. By the time you play your regular season, the roster is going to be announced. It's going to be on the website. It's like, you're not confusing anybody. Just, just, just put numbers current. [01:10:08] Speaker B: Did pick up a yellow card at one point. And, you know, I was just wondering if anybody on Trinity got a yellow card. Like, what does the ref do? Does he pull out his card and go, no number? Like, what does he write down there? [01:10:18] Speaker A: Curly hair, straight, blonde. You know what? [01:10:21] Speaker B: So tall, blonde, center, center, mid. [01:10:24] Speaker A: I think I've seen you before, Red. You know, didn't I give you a card? Yeah. [01:10:29] Speaker B: Well, Trinity have two more to go before the season starts. They've got one. They're both next week, so we could probably talk about that next week. [01:10:37] Speaker A: But they're tcu, I believe, right? [01:10:39] Speaker B: Yep. SMU and tcu. It's a Wednesday and a Saturday. I believe those are both going to Be open to the public as well. [01:10:44] Speaker A: All right, that's beautiful. All right, let's move on to the final topic of the show. That's North Texas sc. Yeah, North Texas sc. Battling a absolute truckload of injuries. North Texas and MLS Next Pro in general are not required to release injury reports. The official club policy is if we're not required to do it, we're not doing it. [01:11:05] Speaker B: Take a shocking hike. [01:11:07] Speaker A: Was literally what they told me. So. Not literally, but basically. Well, but we can put together with some math and who's not playing and who's not on the bench and who's all that kind of thing. It really is in the neighborhood, like 10 to 12 players that are hurt. It's a bunch. Some of them are guys. They're technically FC Dallas players, like Diego Garcia. When was the last time anybody seen Diego Garcia? It's been five or six months. And what they do is they send FC Dallas players that are hurt sometimes down to North Texas with my little air quotes, so then they don't have to be on the MLS injury report because they're with North Texas. And so we don't even know what's wrong with Diego Garcia. We haven't seen him in months. But something's wrong with him because otherwise he'd be starting right? So there's a whole list, like 12 dudes. So they're playing a fair amount of kids, which is actually good, actually like that. But they tied two to two, blue lead, didn't lost the PKs. This team is terrible at PKs. What really matters is that with them this week is Adunis got added to the crossbar challenge at the All Star Game. He's their best player. I believe he's leading the league in scoring, if not outright goals. It's goals. It's just combined. So huge honor for him to get to go to that. That's super cool. So he'll be doing the kick the ball off the bar thing at the All Star Game. It's a great acknowledgment for a guy who is clearly North Texas's best player at this point. [01:12:30] Speaker B: And let's be realistic. The skills challenge is way more entertaining than any of the All Star Game action that goes on any of the actual All Star Game. You know, I know Peter's not here, but if he was, he would be hyping up goalie wars right now. We know how much Peter loves him. Some goalie wars. [01:12:42] Speaker A: There are a couple players that are playing with North Texas that are playing pretty well. Slade Starnes Their captain, who's actually an FC Dallas player. He's like the last center back on the MLS roster. Technically he's playing pretty well. Liam Rostek, who's a academy kid, has now started, I don't know, two or three straight left back. He's high, high on my signing list. Keep an eye on him. If you watch them play and then Nick Simmons is starting to put it together. A guy who early in the year when you watch him you could go oh, I see like 10 nice qualities but it's all kind of like all over. Well, it's coming together. Like is the MLS ready to be impactful? No. But his collective overall performance is starting to put his will on games a little bit and dick dictate through his size and power a bit. And that's good progression you want to see out of a guy. [01:13:33] Speaker B: I think refresh my memory as soon as the first or. I know they both went in the first round but was he the first [01:13:38] Speaker A: second pick third guy Lewis was the first pick and is a year older. Simmons is the second of the third overall second of their picks and is a year younger. He was a freshman instead of a sophomore. They're both have some Caribbean. They're both Americans. They both grew up in America. They're born in America. But one of them is. I think Simmons has got the tnt. No, Simmons has got the Jamaican connection. And yes, doesn't matter what it is. They're both Americans in every way that matters. But they're. Simmons is the bigger one, the more of the prototypical big body 9 like. Like Musa but with more verticality. Listen, he's a million miles from Musa but we're seeing some progression from him and I like it and he even talked about it in the post game that he felt like he's putting a more complete game on the table and in terms of development and a potential to help FC Dallas down the line, you know if he's doing. If Simmons is playing good enough nine that you could bring him back to the bench. You could start Moose and fairings together more likely just as a. Just to have that in the back of your mind as you watch combinations happen with NC Dallas. How good is Simmons doing it? North Texas. It's nice to see a player who's. I think he's 19. They can almost a guy out of academy in a way like because he didn't play at a good academy, he played somewhere whatever and played one year in college. So nice to see that progression and zone. [01:15:02] Speaker B: Newman's having himself A decent season so far, right? He had the the winner last week [01:15:06] Speaker A: or he's looking better and better all the time. Now he has a weird roster condition because he's not an academy kid, he's not a home run, he's a college kid. So he's occupying this really weird 31st roster spot on the MLS side. This is way nerdy, but it means basically he has to be in North Texas the whole year. He might be able to play in leagues cup, he would have been able to play an open cup if they had one. But I don't think he can play an MLS game. But that's fine because he's coming off of the blown acl. So just to see him now back to where he was and I think starting to make a little progression as well, I think that's also really nice to see. [01:15:43] Speaker B: And there was a signing this week as well or in the last few days. [01:15:46] Speaker A: North Texas. Yeah, who cares? It's just, you know, like think back to the history of North Texas. Has a foreign 19, 18, 19 year old come through North Texas and actually mattered? But he's Brazilian, right? The only one everyone wants to talk about is Pedrinho, but a lot of people don't know this. Pedrinho was promised a FC Dallas contract. He only signed a North Texas contract under the promise he'd been given of you signed North Texas and in the middle of the season window, we will give you an deal if you're playing really well. Well, he was playing pretty well. And they got to the middle part of the season and se House is like, nope. And so you remember, you may not remember last, I guess that was actually two years ago now. He had a tank, he stunk it up in the middle of the season, kind of vanished for a bit. It's because he was pouting and complaining. And then like a very like a month left in season, he came back and played really well again. So then they gave him the SC Dallas deal. Well, all that's an expression of the kids mentality because you saw the next season that he got caught up in the Lucho Acosta and got himself basically ejected off this team because he picked the wrong person to pal around with and the wrong person to be is to follow off into the get in trouble land. So again, like to me, like if you say, oh, they sign a farm player, man, I don't care. Like none of the farm players they've ever signed have actually turned out to be anything. Even the ones I thought were good, they were like, nah, because they're not going to eat up a foreign spot on the first team when you need it for DPS or U22s like Kai, you're paying $6 million for or whatever it was $4 million for. So, yeah, they signed a body because they got 13 hurt players. So that's why they signed a kid. He's from the same club as the other center back. They signed the Brazilian. It's like a Division 2 Brazilian team. It's like, you know, if that kid turns out to be a world beater, I'll apologize and I'll tell you all about him. But in the meantime, I don't care. [01:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, bodies are bodies, right? I mean, sometimes you just need to throw some more bodies at it. [01:17:37] Speaker A: It's a body. I mean, frankly, I'd rather just play an academy kid. Like, I believe the dude's a central midfielder. I got a list of like five central midfielders you can just bring up from the academy. I'd rather have you play. Even if he's losing games. I don't care. I don't care if you win a North Texas title. I'd rather play those kids and develop him. But I don't. I don't want to see him lose every game because you support and learn how to win. But like sign some guy from Brazil off of a second division team, that they don't want him anymore and that does nothing. Just play one of the academy kids who are so good. You know, there's plenty of central mids. You got people like Eric Vargas or Kyle Velasquez. You know, you can bring up Alex Soria. Like there's a boatload of guys that are really, really talented in the central midfield. You don't need to bring this guy. That's my 2 cents or put song about it down there. Just let somebody play. All right. Sorry, I had to get a little rant there at the end. I wasn't expecting that. Dennis. Dennis tricked me. [01:18:26] Speaker B: So just before we go, nothing out of Fort Worth, right? No updates on that front? [01:18:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the. The macro on Fort Worth is that the guy that's would be owning that team, and on paper, he wants to do a USL premiere and a women's super league team. That's what he wants. But as we've talked a million times, it's all about revenue control. It's all about the venue. So for him, as we understand it, as we hear from people, as we talk to people, if the Logan. Sorry, not Logan Farrington Field. Which is why my brain Said Logan Farrington Field is the thing like that deal, that situation, that stuff has to happen. The. Not to get political, but the state government took over the running of Fort Worth isd. Do you remember that? I'm not gonna. I don't care why, but that. [01:19:19] Speaker B: We do a whole 30 minutes on that. [01:19:20] Speaker A: I mean, you could do hours on it if that's a thing you're into. I'm not into it and I don't care. Only the only reason I bring it up at all is because that put a wrinkle into the. What's going to happen with Farrington Field. Because the fourth ISD owns it. And like, it's the. Something about the stadium and its renovation and the city and the land around it is whatever's going to happen with that is going to be contingent. Well, whether these teams happen to Fort Worth or not, because if that thing doesn't. If that balls part doesn't happen, then these teams won't happen because it's all about the venue. Like, there's no Cotton bowl over them there for them to get at a really good rate. They need that stadium to happen or it's not going to happen. So that's where that's at. So it's a. You know, it may be like in two years it'll have gone away. People will go, what you guys are full of. That was never gonna happen. I know. It really is the thing. We, we. Not me personally, but people in our little group have talked directly with the owner. We know what's happening. So it's all hanging on that. [01:20:19] Speaker B: And nothing out of Salina other than they will not be playing till 2027 now. [01:20:23] Speaker A: Yes. No, 20. 28. [01:20:26] Speaker B: 28, that's right. [01:20:29] Speaker A: But they had a really great turnout their little bit. They had. They put a bar together in Salina. They put on World cup shows. They got a little field outside their bar, just like McKinney does, by the way. Now Tufts put together a little field outside their stadium outside of their bar. Excuse me. Another great little situation. So they're taken quite smartly. They're taking a lot of cues from Hitchcock about how to do this thing. And. And I think they're. They got a good situation happening. They're. They're now second club. Texoma just won the division in USL 2. So shout out to them, quality team. So Solana's got some good things happening, but there are ways from having people on the field. So that'll be a slow burn cover. [01:21:06] Speaker B: Send in the clowns. [01:21:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the clown Possum's the awesome. [01:21:10] Speaker B: I love that. [01:21:11] Speaker A: So good. All right, anything else, Dennis? We're gonna talk about soccer wise? [01:21:15] Speaker B: I. I think we've beat this horse to death, man. [01:21:18] Speaker A: That was a lot to cover in a pretty short period of time. We got it under an hour and a half. That's amazing. That was less than an hour and a half. Way to talk about nice, Brian. Dennis, thank you for being here, man. [01:21:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. Hopefully you'll have me back. Hopefully I haven't failed you too much. [01:21:35] Speaker A: Oh, no. You've been awesome, dude. And thank you, FC Dallas. Oh, I blew it. Thank you, dfw. I mean, it's only been eight years of calling it. That's it. Thank you, DFW curious fans, soccer fans, for being here. We will see you next week on another edition of Third Degree, the podcast. [01:21:52] Speaker B: We miss you, Peter. [01:21:53] Speaker A: God damn right. You know I suck at this. Third degree. The third degree podcast. Third degree. The third degree Podcast. Third degree. The third degree podcasts. Third degree. The third degree. Never care, Sam.