speaker-0: you Welcome in everyone. All right. If you're a refugees podcast, Ted here, John here here live on another less slightly solemn or Monday, uh, less the, good vibes of, of the opening game have left us cold, hard reality setting in, we're here to talk about it because we're your trusted hosts. Do you guys trust us to talk about DC United?

speaker-1: could be so much worse. gotta say, if you're looking at those MOS score lines, it could be a lot worse. But it was bad. We already talked about how was bad, but it could be worse. That's my silver lining for you, this already at the beginning of episode. There are other teams you may not want to be more than us. Yeah, it was.

speaker-0: We'll get in maybe get into a little bit of that some of the stuff around the league but yeah, yeah, John, how was your how was your weekend my friend?

speaker-1: Well, I think I gave myself a concussion. I, know, minus five points for that. I took a little HP damage ice skating and fell and bounced my temple off the ice. Pretty sure I gave myself a concussion. Not totally sure. I can still remember drum parts of Hot Rod Circuit songs from 20 years ago. I was just playing that a little bit for us. some of the hard drive is still mostly intact, but we'll see how things go from there. What about you?

speaker-0: I will know it's trouble if I say, what do think of Jared Jeffrey? And you're like, who? Who's Jared Jeffrey?

speaker-1: I'd be like, ⁓ he started this weekend, right? Yeah, he looked great. He looked great right next to Peltel. He looked fantastic.

speaker-0: My day was good. was busy. it's the first tournament weekend, refereeing youth. No red cards. I called my first penalty kick. Um, I feel very proud about that. Uh, it's always, it's always good. It was a situation. I'll describe it very briefly and then blah, blah, blah. But it was a situation where the kid literally whiffed on the ball and then, uh, came down with his cleat on, you know, kind of made contact with some kid's knee, uh, called a PK. Uh, and you can know you got the call right because the coach.

speaker-1: How many red cards did you give this week?

speaker-0: is not arguing that there wasn't contact and that maybe that's a foul, but arguing simply about the fact that, this is soccer. What are you doing? I'm like, okay, so you agree with me there was contact and this is your only argument again.

speaker-1: Do they ever make the VAR gesture at you when you make decisions? I would do that all the time.

speaker-0: I would cost that. And then you get a yellow card.

speaker-1: It'd be worth it. feel like for the for the giggles, it'd be good. What would happen if this was like the last? think this is what you should do when you decide like you've aged out of refereeing and you can't do it anymore at the beginning of the match. Like what's more going to play things a little bit differently today at the end of the game? If it's if it's a tie, we're going to go to MLS early MLS style shootouts. We're going to run from half half field and try to score on the goalkeeper. This is what we're going to do. You don't have a choice. If you don't do this, I'm going to I'm going to leave your game is canceled and then just I think that's what you should do. Okay. This is like a final piece out. we're gonna, we're gonna go back to 1997 here and be like, who, what? We're all younger than that. I don't know what that is. ⁓ It is an idea.

speaker-0: It is certainly an idea. But let's get into it. Let's talk soccer. People don't want to hear us talk for hours.

speaker-1: I I disagree. I think that's exactly what they want.

speaker-0: Let's get to it. Let's talk DC, DC United, DC United. Let's get right into the game. A maybe slightly disappointing one, nothing loss ⁓ to Austin FC. ⁓ A game that was certainly not pretty. One of my friends, think watched Chelsea versus Arsenal and said like, yeah, going down and then trying to watch this game is, yeah.

speaker-1: Don't do that. Don't do that. That's a, that's a, that's a classic rookie mistake is to spend your morning watching Premier League and then go to MLS. Like don't do that. Particularly DC United.

speaker-0: Yeah, but particularly DC United right now. Two changes in the lineup. Let's get into probably important. Perhaps very important ones. Jared Stroud coming in and replacing, replacing Jackson Hopkins and then Kojima replacing Peglo's position with Peglo moving up top and replacing Gabrielle Pirani on and give her a point of the bench. Most notably to no, no.

speaker-1: once, I think. King Clark on the bench.

speaker-0: Hey, Cade and Clark, thank you. I almost said Cade cow and I was like, no, wait, that's not right. It's Cade.

speaker-1: He's in the league. He's back. He's back in the league. He's a red boy, I believe. Yeah, no, no, Kate Cowell or Caden Clark. And also, once again, the $7 million man starts on the bench, which is something we're going to talk about a lot, I think. Yeah. There are questions to that effect.

speaker-0: Yeah, see ya make up a primary part of the story. So, know, a change in lineup. ⁓ I would say that definitely this didn't work out. Here are some interesting stats for Jose Kojima. How many ⁓ passes would you say Kojima made in this game? Well, his first half. We'll say in his first half. ⁓ my goodness, I lost his I think I saw it was like two. It was something like two actual passes. He was like, yeah, just...

speaker-1: Did he run a lot though? Was his odometer high at least?

speaker-0: Yeah. He was very sorry. Accurate passes three of three. So he had three passes, but no, no, no chances. No real chances. One touch into the opposite box, which was his shot. ⁓ No successful dribbles, which is funny because I think he had at least at least one there. yeah.

speaker-1: Jared Stroud how many successful troubles did he have? ⁓

speaker-0: Jared Stroud had two passes into the final third at least. So that's, that's something I suppose. Why is it like, feel like they move stuff around on. Just to mess with me. guess it's true. I do not see two passes into the final third for Jared Stroud. Yeah. Not a great, not a great, I don't think they even have his like actual like dribble.

speaker-1: Just to mess with you. Probably none. I bring that up because Jackson Hopkins had 11 in the game against Philly. He led the league on that week on dribbles. And he liked it so much that he shared it on his Instagram story. Kudos to you, Jackson. I don't blame you for doing that. So I will say this. It was obvious from the lineup what was intended to happen. And to be fair to Rainey Weiler, it happened for the first half. And that's what he said in the postgame. And we, there's not a lot to talk about in the second half. So I kind of feel like I can explain, I can give the rationale. So ⁓ in the post game, Renner Weiler answered, think two questions maybe. ⁓ One from Jason Anderson and one from Donald Wine. And they're basically like, did you do this on purpose? Like, was this lineup intentional? Did you, did you know what you would create by doing this? And he was like, yeah, I wanted to get to half at nil nil. And I did. And then I thought that we could maybe sneak a goal in the second half, but they did. And it wasn't an open play. was, it was on a set piece, which they are dangerous at, which I knew. So sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes it went our way last week. didn't go away this last week. I think that is reductive and certainly does not take into account what it felt like for a supporter, but that's not really his business. He's about, he's about results. He, I think has maybe a much more. Realistic, also negative perception on this team's attacking ability. So he thinks going into Austin FC, team that is, I would say, very, very down the middle, very, very, you know, makes the playoffs, but also is not, does not have a roster that wows you. I think I would say, even when I haven't watched that game, I don't feel that way. And, but he thinks going into there, like the best you can do is to, you know, take out all of your creative players, muck up the field, you know, hope that you have a good goalie performance and then maybe steal one on a, on a set piece or counter attack. which does not bode well for the confidence, like for the the long-term confidence of this team. So that I'll just throw that out.

speaker-0: I did not catch the post game conference, but that's interesting. I thought this felt like purely like a, maybe I just need to see what I have in Stroud or is there a position that they can play? Same with Kojima. ⁓ They sat very far back in this game though, you are right. Like it was pretty much like even Karakawa, who's best kind of being able to fly forward had very, very few opportunities to kind of, ⁓ to kind of fly forward. They put Sean Johnson and the entire defense kind of on a lot of damage control mode. ⁓ to their credit, know, Sean Johnson came out and showed that very elite shot stopping ability, ⁓ that makes him, that has made him one of the top goalkeepers in this league. ⁓ his crosses maybe we'll get into a little bit.

speaker-1: Shot stopping good, commanding

speaker-0: less good. ⁓ But I mean, just you're right, very negative performance. It felt like they really weren't trying to push forward. Very few positive performances like the only like really positive call outs I have from this game, where Maddie Patola and Hefty, like the only players I thought played genuinely well. And those are two very, very defensive minded players.

speaker-1: Yeah, if you're not bleach blonde on this team, you're not doing it nothing. So maybe everybody needs to go. Maybe they need to do a trip to the salon. Everybody goes platinum.

speaker-0: What do we make? What do we make of Kate and Clark not being, cause that I didn't even realize that until now. It's like, wow, not even on the Gavin Turner getting the bench position over, uh, over Kate and Clark. This was a guy, this is a guy that, that, that Renee Weiler watched one time and said, yep, go spend $700,000 to bring him on.

speaker-1: And extend him too, once we've gotten him for this. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious. I'm wondering if that was an impulse buy and he regretted it, but he was past the return window and now he's stuck with it. Or maybe he just doesn't see him as a player that you'd plug in. Maybe Gavin Turner wasn't gonna play either. the world in which this, where he's playing, like we're down four nothing maybe, and you're like, whatever, throw the kid on. ⁓ I don't know what. what you'd imagine he'd play in and maybe he thought if Jackson Hopkins is not on the field but on the bench then there's no use of Caden Clark. We're never gonna get that far down the side where we need him playing. I don't know. It is weird. It is very strange because we were told over and over again after he was acquired like this is a major piece of this team going forward. I believe you even said we're gonna build around him at a certain point. I don't know what he practices like. I don't know if he has like a slight injury or something. It's entirely possible. It's way too early to say. I will tell you that the post-game conference was so short as to give no information. The pre-game conference was decent and somewhat long. I don't think really sort of ⁓ illuminating in any kind of way, but I'd be curious this week now going into what will be a circus ⁓ in Baltimore. I'm curious if I'm curious what the mood is like and also what the how they how they set this team out, right? ⁓ Do they repeat what they just did in Austin at home at home in Baltimore and be more united? ⁓ Against a team that has many more attacking weapons than Austin even could dream of or do you just say well We're gonna go out guns a blazing here. We're gonna we're gonna play Louie. We're gonna play All of our attacking weapons and what happens what happens we're gonna give them a show. I'd be curious. I would kind of go that way I would think trying to like a zero zero in Miami at this stage after the week they just had, probably not the best strategy. I don't think that's going to work, but what do you think?

speaker-0: Generally after this game, I really don't know. This was a very, in my mind, kind of bizarre situation just to say we're just going to, because I mean, immediately and maybe to his credit, first half ends, not a whole lot. Second half wasn't like, I won't say the second half was like a night and day difference, but just having Jackson Hopkins, who's much better, much better on the ball, ⁓ much better at like literally the press and being able to kind of dispossess the ball. Couple of times he like won the ball. knew exactly where to go. ⁓ you did not get any of that from, ⁓ from, ⁓ Jared shroud at all. ⁓ Ronnie, of course, it did not have, I thought maybe this was like a signature, like going to be like a signature Ronnie game. He's going to step in the second half and like light it up like he does. ⁓ did not happen. Pegalo look better out wide, but then he did in the sort of the reserve striker, but sorry.

speaker-1: Barani had one opportunity towards the top of the box where he was like faking a shot and trying to get open for himself. I was like, this is how he scores. He does score outside of the 18 with like very low percentage opportunities in the second half. So if he's going to score, he's going to do it right now. He did not, unfortunately. The sub obviously, let's talk about, I think we should talk about Louis. We can talk about the goal briefly. Sean Johnson. I would find him somewhat culpable at the front of sort of being lost at sea, not being able to play the ball coming across his box. The defense fails completely to clear the ball with three or four different opportunities to do so. ⁓ Just kind of, well, those are the situations that you can only put yourself in the a hundred percent like effort ⁓ grit, like clear out the ball, like, you know, last man standing type of defense things so many times before you're to get scored on. ⁓ even against the team, like. Austin who could not, wasn't really stringing passes together, was not getting high danger opportunities in open play. It was going to come to this and they just didn't have the wherewithal that one last time to get out of there. I think if they had, it would have been zero zero. I think, I think they would have walked out of here with a point that had four and four through two coming back home to play Miami. ⁓ it just didn't work out that way. I think it was a gamble probably worth taking. I think, I think he probably has zero mark in this Miami game. ⁓ and wanted to, and wanted to maybe just not. go three points from three, but it didn't work out. And I think he, I think he kind of thought that that could happen too. Based again, solely based on vibes. He's not a warm and fuzzy guy. He's not Troy. Even in a loss, even in a loss, Troy was like, Hey, you know, the sun will come out tomorrow guys. It's okay. we're, know, we're building to something, but Randy's was like, yeah, you know, what are gonna do? I'm too tonic. have, I have Swiss vibes.

speaker-0: Yeah, and I guess going back a little bit to the way this game played, I do wonder if, you know, the heat, know, this Austin weather, maybe he's like, I can't, they can't play like they played, you know, with sort of the Katonic press and everything like that. So it's like, maybe we just sit back, let, you know, let, ⁓ let Austin try to press us. ⁓ and then maybe try to turn it on the second half. We we've got, you know, fresher legs, you know, sort of our, game changers that I think can make the difference. maybe that was a factor sort of playing into this. ⁓ you know, I don't know, I don't know what to make of it. ⁓ let's, ⁓ let's talk Luis, ⁓ coming off the bench in the 77th minute.

speaker-1: his other more or less minutes that he had against Philly.

speaker-0: I think it's less. I think he had at least 20, 20 or so minutes ⁓ after, after Philly. ⁓ But this time he had just 13 minutes. So I find it like everybody is sort of passing. I think the bigger storyline with him is maybe not how he's maybe not how he's been playing. Because I just don't know. Like you look at the moments he's been in this game. I don't know if you can like really accurately judge a player when he doesn't get, get the starting role, unless they come in and make an impact. You can, can argue and well, he didn't make an impact. And I'd say fair. ⁓ you he didn't come in, he didn't change the game, but I feel like I look at him and I'm like, I need to see, like, I need to see a full like 60, 70 minutes. I need to see him start a game. I need to see him have some more connections. And right now we haven't seen that. I know like, you know, first press conference, ⁓ Renee was like trying to quell expectations on this kid. Be like, tried to tamp things down. That'll work. know, that, may be a smart move to, kind of ease him in, not to, you know, put all this pressure on him. Cause he's already going to have a lot of pressure as the most expensive player, but also not starting him and not giving him real opportunities. ⁓ And maybe giving him a start is going to start raising questions. You spend all this money for this guy and he's not starting games. I don't, there has to be a point when he has to get his first start. And maybe I feel like Renee is just hoping maybe, you know, maybe these first couple of games, he throws them out there. He gets a goal, he gets an assist, he gets a nice play, and then he's like, okay, now you've earned a start and now you can kind of ride that, that wave. But I mean, if it doesn't happen, you know, are you, and are you really going to play him and start him? What do you do here?

speaker-1: That is an open question. think you sort of have to I think it probably is too early to say he has to be thrown in from a start here. It's getting ⁓ I would say that the water is It's starting to be like a trimmer on the surface. It's not it's not out of boil, but you're you're at a parboil You're at a little bubbles popping up. I think other thing to look at too probably doesn't mean anything ⁓ But maybe it does so Ty Briba was one to watch she didn't get a lot of service. He was pretty inactive He was also really mad about his sort of role ⁓ and lack of service in that game Um, I'd be curious, you know, strikers always get mad when they don't get service. Uh, I will be curious to see how happy he is. If it's, this is a repeat set up on the road to just sort of pack it in, take all your offensive players off except for Ty and see what happens. If that's the team, if that's like an environment he wants to plan, obviously the check still cash and he's got to be okay with it. At the end of the day. Um, he was still, he did, he was practicing a bit of the dark arts as he was in week one. He was rolling around trying to draw fouls from Brendan Hines like a couple times. ⁓ But certainly not as effective, the obviously the team wasn't set up to make him as effective. it's, you know, something to, I don't know that that's something necessarily to pay attention to, which is something that I observed. I don't know that has any value. Yeah.

speaker-0: And, and you talking about, ⁓ talking about Tiberibbo, I think he's another player again, that kind of stood out. I think there was a moment when DC was pressuring the ball. think it was, I want to say, ⁓ in the first half, I believe it was Stroud. Stroud and a lot of other players were kind of caught up field and he sort of rushes back. ⁓ I believe the commentator on the call called it out and was able to kind of like hold up that type of attack. So that kind of back press and that ability. ⁓ Yeah, he didn't have a moment offensively, but just his overall work rate. I'm not really, you know, he's frustrated with, think with losing this game, you know, maybe with the way things went. ⁓ You know, overall I am not. too Ty. Yeah. Overall, I think he is not, he is not someone who is going to be, you know, this isn't like a warning sign or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah, at least obviously.

speaker-1: Just something I noticed is all.

speaker-0: I mean, you have to look at the way the team played last week and say, okay, that is a good way we played. ⁓ what do we make? mean, going back a little bit to kind of like, you know, we talk about, ⁓ you know, we talk about how like, don't really, we're kind of curious like how Renee Weiler wants to play it. He is somebody they've been talking about the press. ⁓ he wants to play exciting pressing soccer, but he wants to be like an exciting coach and everybody else like who kind of fall and say, well, he's kind of a pragmatist. plays very pregnant. This felt like a very pragmatist type look at the game.

speaker-1: On the Discord, people were mentioning the specter of Benny Ball, sort of, and having that kind of philosophical setup. Maybe so. I it certainly... I think that is... I talked about this on one of the many preview shows about sort of the empty language of tactics and talking about how teams are going to play and how completely meaningless it is. And how everyone uses the same set of buzzwords. And when it comes down to it, the game is the game. And the circumstances dictate. how the game's gonna go. So they can say all they want about we're gonna be hyper pressing and tack, we're gonna be exciting and on the front foot. And sometimes they're not because that's just you can't play all that way all the time, particularly when you have this roster. Like you're just looking to get, you are looking for a wooden spoon if you are trying to drive your dodge knee on like a Ferrari. You're gonna, you're not gonna win any races. You're gonna end up in a tree. You're, it's not, that's not the way it's gonna go. So I just think that that is, I think that was spin from the good doctor about what about what this was gonna be. This was always gonna be this way.

speaker-0: Yeah. And I think, I think it very much feels like, so we, we, we think back to last year, ⁓ you know, Troy, the sane went out with this group, but a lot of the same players, maybe obviously some big changes, but you know, Bartlett's there, Rawls is there. Sorvino was there. Peltel is there. Peglo was there. Stroud, Kojima, all those players were there. Like literally the only difference in this lineup, what is hefty and Bribo and Johnson, like literally who's in goal and everything like that. And like, he tried to play. kind of high aspirational soccer with less talent. And this team got absolutely smoked. Confidence plummeted. And then he tried to correct. He tried to be pragmatist. And by then you're just kind of sinking and you're taken on water. And, you know, even then that's not working. And so you're kind of, your team is a little bit broken. It very much feels like to me that what, you know, he like this team is not winning, you know, not going to be challenging right now, at least top of the Eastern conference. They're not going to be there. They are settling right in. They're going to have games like this. They're going to have games like, you know, conceivably against Philly. And I think he is trying to figure out a way to keep his team afloat, you know, rely on kind of some 50 50 soccer and, know, eventually there will be some results that come in and then, you know, the summer comes in, they still have that DP slot that they can use. By the way, the roster profiles came out again, but we can talk a little bit about that. They are, they are sticking. Finally, they have two DPs and we're going with the two four, two four. The two four, two million dollars in gam. My full estimation is that will be a million dollars in gam. Also some other little nuggets we'll get in the show. I think we'll save that for the Patreon. We'll push that onto the Patreon show, kind of going over the roster profiles and give some perspective on that. So if you want to be a Patreon, $5 tier to do that. ⁓ But kind of being that more pragmatist to start, you maybe you lose some close games, maybe you struggle, maybe you pick a win, maybe you steal a couple wins, you do a couple smash and grabs. ⁓ You know, looking at... some of the lot of the Eastern Conference right now. Montreal looked terrible. They literally were up a man against Chicago I think it was this week. I believe that's correct. I'll have to go back and look. I noticed they were they were up a man got smoked three to nothing. Atlanta despite all the talent they have on the field does not look good to start the to start the season. Philly again had a heartbreaker against NYC. Yeah, it Chicago three nothing loss and they were up a man for a majority of that game. ⁓ so there are, there are some teams and, ⁓ also I want to call out Orlando again, not looking very strong either. So you're looking.

speaker-1: It good for about 45 minutes. Yeah. ⁓

speaker-0: Although, know, some people were kind of commenting like, hey, Miami's playing well. They just got maybe caught bad on a couple of breaks and then ⁓ the door cracked and then the door blew open. So a lot of teams out here in the East not having good starts. Toronto also getting blown out by Vancouver three to nothing. So, you know, all of these teams that we've talked about, you know, that are talked about at the beginning of the season, ⁓ you know, are struggling to start. And DC so far is sitting with a win.

speaker-1: They are proven correct.

speaker-0: sitting in playoff position after two games. Would you rather be us right now or would you rather be New England, Montreal, Toronto, Atlanta United, some of these teams that are literally sitting kind of at ⁓ very much haven't scored a goal, haven't looked competitive. Montreal has opened up the season now, but they lost five, nothing to San Diego now open with a negative eight goal differential to start the year.

speaker-1: Remember, I said it could be worse, guys, and there are some opportunities here. All right, question for you. This is a non, this is just a question. What do you think happens first? We win by three or lose by more than three?

speaker-0: We'll see, I've, bleh, lose by more than three. ⁓

speaker-1: I think us scoring three goals and allowing none is, it may not happen this year. I don't, that would be a surprise based on, I mean, maybe we play Montreal and that happens, I don't know. But I think that this team, for the most part, it seems like we're not going to embarrass ourselves, but we're not going to cover ourselves in glory. That's kind what it feels like. Granted, two games in, different sample sizes, but that's sort of the takeaway so far.

speaker-0: Uh, the, uh, yeah, just the, you talk about that. It's like, if we had like Montreal thrown in right now, if we had, uh, Kansas city, if we had, we got Atlanta on the road though. I don't know. I'm less, I don't know. feel like.

speaker-1: I don't know if I want them right now. Do you want them right now? I want them once we have that Louis is like a real player. I would like to take them on when we have all of our DPs playing soccer.

speaker-0: We'll see. mean, this is becoming the storyline. ⁓ When do you, here's a prediction for you. When do you think, when do you think ⁓ Louis gets his first start? Cause it's gotta happen, right? It has to happen.

speaker-1: Well, yeah, for sure. Let's see. Let's look at the matches here real quick. So we got Miami at quote unquote home, Chicago away, Atlanta away. I think he gets his start at Chicago away. Next, the week after this one.

speaker-0: I think that's a little tough. I think you give him, I actually, I'm going to go to Lim. I could be completely wrong. I think he gets his start against Miami. I feel like you cannot let that bubble for that long. Well, against Miami, I think there's going to be a lot more attention. I think you have to look at the profile of player that you have in here. This is also a game against Inter Miami. I think you kind of-

speaker-1: They wait until April? ⁓ He may want to be seen on the same field with Messi. He may have seen like this is the one, the only glamorous thing about coming to America is playing against Messi.

speaker-0: that. You know, he looked at these two games and he's like, you know, we got the first game. I don't think you're ready. I don't want to throw you out in a road game, but I think you're going to be hard pressed. He's a 23, 22, three year old kid who grew up playing with Messi on FIFA probably, you know, when he was, when he was a kid, I think you're going to be hard pressed to keep him out. I think he makes, I think that we will make his start against Miami.

speaker-1: I think that will be very, very possible. Well, I want to get to, I want to get to some questions before we go over to the Patreon show. wanted to, not, we didn't like watch the game or talk too much about it, but just noting Trinney Rodman gets an appearance against Argentina and gets need in the back. Sort of gay people who are watching it, PTSD about it. I think there was a concern that this was going to be a repeat. She, the game ended while she was getting treatment. It seems like she's okay. I don't imagine she'll start the second game. One note. of it was that ⁓ there's someone, I don't know if it was like Jumbo lip reading or where people heard it, but there was, while she was getting treatment, she's like, they are laughing at me right now and I'm going to beat them up basically. So Argentina, don't know. I'm very interested to see like how many countries in international play bring external factors into the games playing against the United States. You know I'm saying? Yeah. You know what mean? I'm curious. I'm curious. And I would, you know, I'm curious. Our players may be the unfortunate receptacles of of of righteous indignation about other things.

speaker-0: Let's get to a couple of the Patreon questions we have on the show. Since those were open, I was not. discord, sorry, discord, not Patreon, discord. ⁓

speaker-1: I got him. A glue. Yes. Says I am worried about Sean. I'm seeing sloppiness. Am I justified? I am seeing slowness at coming out for crosses. I'm seeing him not sort of being able to wade through the bodies that sort of the way you'd like to see. We always notice that first, right? I think there's two things you notice with a goalkeeper at three, I guess, but the two things you notice most are lacking saves that they should be making. So shot stopping, ⁓ like, you know, we had a couple goalies last year that had challenges with that. And then getting, not being able to claim the ball in the box and flapping at a ball. And I think he's also had a couple of drops that could have been gold. was two drops, sort of like rebound fumbles against Philly. That could have been goals if not for clearance. I'm not, it's not, it's not a huge concern yet. He's also saved. He's also saved a couple of goals with his, with some diving saves. So you got to kind of balance those out, but I would, I'd pay attention to that. You get older, you start to move a little slower. It's not entirely, but not entirely uncommon. The shot savings still will be there. He's got some of the reflexes, but you know, I don't know. What do think?

speaker-0: Yeah. mean, I think the, you know, the, interesting is like, know, Sean Johnson is not, he's not a small keeper for sure, but he's certainly not the sort of imposing kind of physical presence that you have in a lot of sort of older goalkeepers. This is, think why they're some goalkeepers like their longevity is so good just because they are such a, you know, massive physical case. Yeah. Casey Keller, Brad Friedle. mean, those guys were just super physical goalkeepers that were just able to really just kind of, you know, Use strength and everything like that. ⁓ it's something to pay attention to. think it's something, you know, does, Cody, ⁓ the goalkeeper coach, does he say, you know, I think we need to start like, maybe you need to stay home a little bit more. ⁓ maybe you need to not be as you, have excellent shot stopping, you know, yes, we might give up a couple goals, but you know, maybe we trust, you know, our, our defenders, ⁓ both Bartlett and roles, I think I've shown at least a good presence at sort of being able to sort of clean up the business.

speaker-1: Kai had a big one in this game. He bailed them out big time. So that was good to see.

speaker-0: Yeah, so I mean, again, you know, and maybe it's just kind of,

speaker-1: Giving us the balance here saying we've only given up two goals in two games I bet we gave up more than that last season through two games probably But I think we're also probably gonna give up more than two this weekend So we're gonna have this and there's some balance with this math. It's gonna even out in the end

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, again, I think you gotta take, I think right now, know, Sean Johnson is who he is. It's definitely a, uh, I want to say kind of a security boat. Um, right now, I think I've seen from him, maybe a little more than what I've seen from other goalkeepers that have, that have graced this team so far over the past couple of years, they've been trying to shift around. Um, you know, again, this team faced, uh, but it was 2.2, 2.3 XG, uh, and walked away only giving up one. So. you know, sitting in the positive. You saw this team time and time again last year face, you know, one, two XG and give up three, four goals. So it is what it is. Really. mean, this is the bigger story. I think coming out of this is, uh, Grant Lavelle, uh, the 17 year old Academy goalkeeper, homegrown player, uh, signed through the 28, 29 season with options for 29, 30 and 2030, 31. So doing some math, he will be what? 19, 20 during that time is what you hope is kind of your heir apparent that this is kind of a lifeboat to get you through 27 to get you through the rest of this year to maybe see you into next year. And then your hope is, that, you know, grants on the bench and maybe

speaker-1: We're to be getting minutes with our MLS Next Pro team every week. We're going to ready to step right in. What? Sorry. Excuse me. ⁓

speaker-0: Yes, of course. But you it's, you, you hope that that is your, that is your player that can come in, that can be kind of a Bill Hamid type player that can just step in 18, 19, 20, uh, and kind of be ready to go.

speaker-1: great. From Kami Grease says I was hoping for more between Kojima and Kurokawa but that didn't pan out. I felt Kojima is better in the midfield than as a left winger. Is this an area to build on or should Weiler move on to something else? I think it depends on what the goal was. If the goal was to generate offense with a set up, I don't think it worked. But I don't think that really necessarily was the intention. I think it got, it got what he wanted, at least according to his own admission in the, in the post game press conference. Is he rationalizing after the fact? Did he think that maybe they could still generate more than zero shots as a, as an entity? Maybe, probably. ⁓ but that didn't happen. I think that you will see that. I think you will see this lineup again. I think that I think you will see this set up because he did not seem terribly upset with how they.

speaker-0: Yeah. And I think it's more of a recognition again of what his talent is. ⁓ I think Kachema is better in the middle. Maybe. I think he played, he had some good moments sort of playing in the middle. ⁓ I did see him have one moment of this game where he got space and he was able to sort of successfully kind of be in the right position. Dribble through, get to the edge of the box. ⁓ I think it's pretty clear, like he's a player that started out very brightly in that 24th season. ⁓ But he's also a player that... I think as this team has kind of shifted formations, maybe he's becoming a little bit sort of obsolete. He did not look good on that wing side. I did not see a lot from him that really indicated that that's a place he wanted to play. And as soon as other players came in, the game started to shift a little bit. Chances might have been still kind of around the same. I don't think they generated too much more than that, but there was definitely sort of a change in mentality in this team. Started to put a little more pressure on Austin.

speaker-1: For those of you who are watching on Twitch and YouTube, hello, thank you for doing that. If you're on Twitch and you want to subscribe and give us one of your free monthly Prime sub, do that. We appreciate you stealing money from Jeff Bezos to give directly to us. We think that's great. ⁓ And then the one other thing I wanted to talk about before we close the free part of show was this Be More United business is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. ⁓ The advertising campaign for this game in Baltimore, ⁓ they're calling it be more united, they're using Raven's colors. The thing that most rubbed me the wrong way is that they are deleting comments on their posts about this game that are people that are having negative feelings about it ⁓ and saying like, is, we get Sugarhill Gang and Baltimore gets Wallet. So that seems fair. That seems like, that's, somehow DC United came out, DC came out short-handed on this stick. How did that happen? And people are getting their comments to weed it all over the place. I understand that they're trying to get people to come to this game It's very important that people come to this game. It's probably the bottom line saver for this club this game ⁓ Compared to the rest of the season, but I think it's really weak and lame if that's what's going on I don't know. I didn't see it, but people on our discord were saying that that was the story and they were having comments that we did So I think that's dumb and they should stop doing that ⁓ It's tough out there on the internet for an admin. I totally get that. But the only way to have that to stop happening is to win games. And then people will stop being as mad at you as they are all the time. And you can actually even see that. Last week against Philly, the vibes were not immaculate, but very good. All you got to do is win. People want to be happy. I wanted to be happy. I talked about a good vibe stream. I still want to be on the good vibe stream. But don't tweet comments. Don't be whack. That's true.

speaker-0: Yeah. And that's, yeah, it's, yeah, that's, that's nonsense. I think you have to recognize where people are coming from. Um, yeah. Wale being the halftime show, uh, for this boss. What is it? What is with like DC right now in Baltimore and trying to like, do like a halftime show?

speaker-1: Want that money, baby? They want it. They're trying to make a show. They want that stadium money. They're trying to make this a big production. They're like, hey, if you come to this game against Inter Miami, you're going to see Wally at halftime. We just put out a new record. It's very big. ⁓ Also, it'll be like this every week at MLS Next Pro. Exactly as many people come to this game will come to MLS Next Pro. So, you know, give us the money. It's going to be just like this every week.

speaker-0: Yeah, everybody's gonna come see Messy Son when he plays for the... Absolutely. Just like everybody... You remember when Beckham... I do? Brooklyn.

speaker-1: Now, that's right, much happier times in the Beckham family, think, between the kids and him, but things have changed.

speaker-0: Yes, I agree with you. know, it's we hate we hate the kind of notion of you know of censorship of trying to make this make this you know different or to to quell fan disappointment I think you have to kind of recognize Yeah, and when when soccer games and things will be better I don't know if winning fixes everything with this team right now. I think there's a lot

speaker-1: Just win, baby.

speaker-0: there's a lot kind of underneath that winning would have fixed this, you know, 2018, 2019. Now I think there needs to be a lot more that needs to happen. For sure. Other than just winning.

speaker-1: I just mean for the admin not wanting to like, you know, throw his phone into the wood chipper. Just win some games. That's all you gotta do.

speaker-0: All right, folks, that's going to do it for the free edition of the show. We're going to switch over to Patreon. We got a lot more questions, maybe a little deeper dive in. We'll talk maybe a little bit about the next game against ⁓ Inter Miami. Maybe give some expectations and some predictions. So if you're at the $5 tier, stick around and listen. If you are on the free tier, you can join $5 patreon.com slash RKUFGs if you want to listen to the full unreleased show.

speaker-1: If not, you'll see us next Monday as we talk about the wonderful, the five nothing DC United victory in a full ⁓ &T bank stadium. ⁓

speaker-0: And the amount of messy jerseys that switch over to DC kits and they sell out. right. right. Luis becomes the Luis jerseys sell out instantly and becomes the $7 million man that we all know.

speaker-1: Someone take a picture of the trash cans out the stadium filled with pink jerseys and and that's that's gonna happen So we'll talk about that on Monday at 830. We'll see you there.

speaker-0: See you there, vamos.