City SC Posse - Ep. 12: Two Points Dropped in Dallas, Open Cup Time

Bright: All right, coming at you midweek. It's Tuesday nights, so we've got our recap from the weekend game and then also the preview for tomorrow night's game. It's our first midweek matchup of the year. And of course this one, the US Open Cup. So I'm coming at you from the road. So I'm not in my home studio, but no worries there. We are in, I'm in dual screen mode here so that I can look up the stats and still. still see what's going on on the pod, but you know, we'll power through and I still got my Mexican beer. I got a Dos Equis here today. So yeah, got it.

Kev: There you go. I was going to ask if you're in Florida, it looks like the exact same background that you had on in Florida. Is that one of those, one of those like AI kind of backgrounds that you throw on or is that your actual wall that you're facing?

Bright: No, this is this is my actual actual wall that I'm facing

Kev: It looks like the same room that you were in when you were in Florida, what do know?

Bright: ⁓ It is not. It is not. What can I say? Well, I mean, let's get right to it. What did you think of the game on Saturday night? If, you know, our listeners, they saw my blog post and my overall thoughts and we'll get to some of those, but I haven't heard your take yet. So let's hear it.

Kev: Thank you. Thank Yeah, so this was a game that felt like we should have won. For those of you that don't know, we ended up tying. It was a 1-1 game. It was a disappointing tie. ⁓ was not like DC the week before to where we were lucky to come away ⁓ with that tie, where we had scored within the 96th minute. This one felt like we gave them this tie. We'll talk about how they scored later. It was ⁓ incredibly disappointing, big letdown. feel like we've had a lot of these kind of goals that were ⁓ just kind of giveaways. ⁓ And we went down one niggle, and I can't believe we were able to, I mean, I guess I can believe we were able to battle back because it felt like we were on the verge of scoring a couple times throughout the game. But it did feel good to tie it up and... Just felt like a loss, you know at the end of it kind of felt like we lost even though we ended up tying it

Bright: Well, you know, that was that was my thing. And I talk about this in the blog post. Again, for anybody that wants to go and read my immediate reaction, I typed it up, I think, right around the the end of the game. And I didn't get it published till till Monday. But, you know, I was taking notes and all my thoughts. And really, that was you summed it up pretty nicely. The first half, I felt like we pretty much dominated and we have plenty of opportunities to score. not just in the shots that we had, but the shots that we missed or the shots that we didn't take or the breakaway pass that somehow we couldn't connect on. You know, there were all kinds of opportunities where we were just dominating possession, dominating that first half. didn't punish them. We didn't score that goal. And you kind of felt like it went into halftime, like, okay, this is going to come back to bite us. And exactly what you said is now in back to back weeks, we've come out a out of halftime and given up a goal within the first five minutes of the second half, both of them, both against New York City and now against Dallas, were defensive lapses. You know, it was, was a giveaway or, you know, bat defensive marking, you know, that shouldn't have resulted in a goal. And until that point, you had great defense. And even for the rest of the game, we had good defense, but one mistake, they come down, they score. And instead of coming out of there with all three points, We come out with just one again.

Kev: You know, disappointing one, a disappointing one. And ⁓ you're right, like that first half felt like we dominated all the way through to maybe about the 40th minute where they started really putting some pressure on us as we ⁓ were about to go in. And I kind of felt a little lucky they didn't squeeze one in in the last couple of minutes of the first half. But just the the mental lapses in the backfield as we're controlling the ball to

Bright: Mm.

Kev: to make that pass to Edelman, who had really no chance to do much with it, but showed no urgency to get to the ball either. And they were able to kind of scoop right in and all of a sudden they were on the counter and we had nobody over on that left side of the field. think our defensive players were kind of centralized, center right, and they were able to make that quick pass to the left. And down we go, right?

Bright: Yeah. Well, you know, they certainly weren't they weren't expecting the giveaway there. And, you know, Edelman, you could argue that he was, you know, left kind of flat footed because the ball that came to him didn't have enough pace on it. And, you know, but still he he should have been able to get enough muscle on that pass to get it back to Bumgardeau or whoever it was that he passed to instead. You know, he kind of just barely touches the ball and he's leaning backwards. Now he can't

Kev: Cool. No.

Bright: catch up, you know, so he was already kind of had the wrong momentum going and then Dallas comes in, they attack that, you know, they get, they get the easy goal. Now, I guess you have to give it to the entire team and Edelman, he, you know, he comes back and he's the one that gets the assist, ⁓ on the nice, you know, the nice cross to the far post. I mean, you're taught, you're taught that at a young age. ⁓ he was in a good position.

Kev: Yeah I'm

Bright: put it in the perfect ball there and bomb guard all right place, right time. Easy tap in, although he made it a you know, little chaotic if you will bite. Sure.

Kev: Well, he's not meant to be he's not meant to be Putting that in I think Becher was right behind him, We had two guys going. Yeah Yeah, it was ⁓

Bright: door and he taps it in off the post. Yeah, kind of like the Blues game just the other day. Somebody missed it in the center and then it went right to neighbors and neighbors gets the empty netter. So if Bumgutter would have missed it, maybe Betcher would have tapped it in. ⁓ But Bumgurtles first goal, that's good anyhow. ⁓

Kev: Yeah, scooped it in. Yeah, I have been, if only. Yeah, I'm trying to remember back to their goal now. Was it Edelman that ⁓ made that weak pass or was he the one receiving it showing no urgency? I thought he was receiving it, but I could be wrong.

Bright: Well, he received the initial pass and then went to pass it back. So he got the ball, went to pass it back and then didn't put enough, you know, the pass itself. Now again, you can make the claim that the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, and we've really made an effort to play it out of the back and overall we did a pretty good job out of that, ⁓ you know, all game.

Kev: Good day. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That might be the one I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah. Like that completely on him.

Bright: But it makes you real nervous, one, for situations like that, when you're playing it out of the back, it's only one bad pass leads to a goal. And two, again, we did it pretty well and kept our composure. But at the end of the game, when Dallas is putting on all that pressure and we're trying to play it out of the back, and you're just like, oh my god, did get it out of there? Of course I was. Yeah.

Kev: not Man, were you not nervous? I was just like, dear God, just play it up. Just play it up. Yeah. But they were able to handle it, I guess. But yeah, I was nervous the whole time. The whole time we were playing it in the backfield, I had zero confidence that we were going to be able to.

Bright: Yeah, well... And again, it ended up working out. We ended up getting a toy shirt on a breakaway at the end of the game. And, you know, it's a bummer that a couple of things, one, he couldn't put it away. And I was sometimes when you're on a breakaway there, you're at the mercy of the angle and things like that. But two, it's like toy shirt, just not getting enough play time for me because again, he comes in, he looks threatening, has opportunities to score. And I'm just.

Kev: Put one in, man. Put one in. Yeah.

Bright: shocked that he's not getting more playtime.

Kev: Yeah, their defense really misjudged the speed that he was coming in at, I guess, on that breakaway. It was awesome. I thought for sure he was going to put that one in the back of the net and it would have been really nice to see. It would have obviously put us in the lead. We've been on the toy shirt bandwagon here for the last couple of games wanting to get him more playing time. And that would have helped. I think that would have helped him get the start, you know, coming into the next game.

Bright: Yeah. Sure. ⁓ Yeah. For sure. Now I caught some flack online with my with my blog post because I was not happy with this tie. A lot of people argued like, ⁓ ties on the road are fine. I'm like, yeah, okay. Like, again, we talked about this before, in theory, and in New York City, a tie on the road that we didn't deserve. Like, yes, we were we were happy with that. But this was a game that we should have won.

Kev: Hello. You know.

Bright: And we had the chance to walk away with all three points on the road and we didn't and we didn't do it because we couldn't score, right? That's what it comes down to again. Like the rest of the game was pretty much there, but we can't finish and it costs us the game. We'll come out of there with another one point. Do we move up in the standings? No, we actually moved down. So we're now in 14th place. So it didn't do us. Didn't do us very good at all. Our goal differential is still minus three.

Kev: Yeah. Good teams win that game, right? That was a game we were winning the whole time. It certainly felt that way. And good teams put it away, get three points on the road. That's what you're going to see top tier teams do. It's not us right now. It feels good, though. I will say, this is our third game in a row that we put points up. So you got to give them that. We did get another goal on the road.

Bright: Yes. Yep. Yep. Well, let's talk about some of the stats. Yep.

Kev: difficult to get goals ⁓ in away games. ⁓ So you got to feel good about that. ⁓ Offensively, outside of putting up multiple, you know, multiple balls in the back of the net. Again, it feels like we're there. ⁓ I know we're going to get into some stats, into some player rankings. ⁓ So maybe I'll hold my comments for that. So go ahead, jump on in. We'll get a little closer to that.

Bright: Well, yeah, yeah. And again, again, I wouldn't agree. We've got some of that momentum going. So we'll talk about some of that going into the, you know, the cup tie tomorrow night. But overall, we dominated most of the stats. They did have more shots, eight to five, but we had more shots on target four to three. So again, better, you know, five total shots, four of them on target. Good. I'd like to see more, obviously.

Kev: I don't want to jump in. Yeah.

Bright: But again, possession, and we kind of talked about this going into the game, that we had an opportunity here to dominate possession. again, we called that in the last podcast, and sure enough, 61 % possession to their 39. And that's where, yeah, when you control the ball that much, you hope to get more goals than just one, you know, so.

Kev: I like those games. Yep.

Bright: So that was disappointing and especially in the first half, think, you we probably had possession at some point of around 70%, you know, and outside of a couple of counter attacks by Dallas. Again, we dominated that whole first half. Yeah, of course, you know, most counter attacks feel that way. Yeah, yeah. When you have that much of the ball and you can't score and you know that all it takes is one good counter attack and you're losing a game that you shouldn't be losing, it makes those ⁓

Kev: I like that which were dangerous. That's sort of dangerous, yeah. Didn't feel good, Mm-hmm.

Bright: feel, you know, feel dire to come out of that with a save or a stop. So, you know, and again, we did that in the first half.

Kev: Yeah.

Bright: ⁓ yep, ⁓ passes 404 to their 309, ⁓ pass accuracy, 83 % for us versus their 81. Files was the same. ⁓ yellow cards, we only had one, so only picked up one yellow card. ⁓ I'm going to have to look up and see who that was. If you remember.

Kev: Bye. It was something stupid where he handed out two yellows to both players. And we did not deserve it.

Bright: ⁓ Well, was Cordova. Yeah, it was Cordova.

Kev: Yeah, yeah, he got tackled. He got tackled and I like kind of stepped. Blocked, know the path like you do and turned his back, but I didn't see a file on his end at all. You know in that in that play. I was left wondering what the hell he did that got him yellow. Positioning his body.

Bright: Yep. No. It... Exactly. Yeah, and he positioned his body behind it.

Kev: For a file, for a file, he positioned it for the file, but.

Bright: And it was the other player that went to ground. the fact that the other player went to ground with a tackle and got Cordova, to me, and they said it on the air too, the announcers are like, I don't know what's going on here. Now they ended up not giving the Dallas guy a yellow. He does not have a yellow on that play. It's only Cordova, which is interesting. And then when we resumed play, they... got the free kick. ⁓

Kev: I was very confused on why, because that ended up being a pretty good chance for them, if I remember correctly. They had a good, yeah, good opportunity. think we had to make some kind of save on whatever cross ended up happening there. Yeah, that was stupid. I don't want to hear more. Why didn't, why did they take away the card on them?

Bright: Yes, it was it Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Well, and I even I don't know. And I even thought at some point I was like, ⁓ the league will probably review that and take that yellow card away, which they do sometimes. But I haven't heard anything. It's still showing up on the stats that Cordova picked up a yellow. So, you know, I don't know. I don't Yeah, I know he has it in as it in for St. Louis for sure. Now, corners, we had 10 corners there five. So did you end up going the over on the corners? ⁓

Kev: Good. This referee, man, like he hates St. Louis. He just hates him. Yeah. Yeah, no. I didn't. I didn't. I knew like, I swear we had the over like in the first half. it felt like it, ⁓ you know, was gonna hit. I was just left wondering why I placed the bets that I placed like an idiot. Lost some money this week.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I tried to put money on the draw and cause it was, it had a pretty decent payout. And I, again, I felt like it had the best odds and sure enough. ⁓ yeah. And that's, that's what happened. But Jack, Kings wouldn't let me do it because they couldn't verify my location again. So I know. So I was like, I don't know that I might just be done with Jack Kings because I was home.

Kev: Mm-hmm. Yeah it goes plus 275 or something like that yeah 220 maybe It's It's rough stuff.

Bright: I understand that I'm on the road a lot. travel, my stuff moves, but I was home and they were like, switch to wifi, switch off wifi, restart the, did all that. It never worked. And I just said, screw it. So I didn't make any bets on the game, but I would have bet the draw and I would have, I would have doubled my money plus some, you know, so that's disheartening.

Kev: Yep. Yep. Well, I took the Asian handicap and I hit half my bet. So half of it came back to me because I played the plus 25.25. So I ⁓ didn't lose anything on the bet. just didn't win as much. ⁓ But I did lose. Stupid, you know, players to score goals.

Bright: Right. Right, right. Yeah.

Kev: I played a better and I played a hurdle. I think one of them was going to get me a goal and no. Close. Yeah.

Bright: Yeah, but Hardell has some chances. Hardell has some chances. I don't know that Becher really did outside the one that Vomgardeau tapped in.

Kev: No, I think he that that bed is going to sit on the sidelines for a little bit with butchers so done with him

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was tough. you know, you know, with our forwards, I mean, better ended up playing 90 minutes, which I thought was crazy. So like, how McSorley doesn't come in early. I know, you know, flabbergasted by some of these decisions from De May.

Kev: Exhausted at the end of it again. Yeah. I assume. Yeah, I assume the lack of McSorley is probably due to play tomorrow. I'm guessing he's going to be starting for us.

Bright: I mean, we'll talk about that in a minute. ⁓ But still, you got to figure, you know, Saturday night matchup in you know, MSL, that, yeah, that takes priority. And even still, like you could have brought him in in the 75th minute or something like that, ⁓ you know.

Kev: Yeah. Sure, get him in for... How about the 95th minute?

Bright: Well, I guess you could have done that too. At least he came in at the 90th.

Kev: I didn't play we We played something like the 95th minute didn't we? We had we had some ridiculous sub and I remember I I texted you and I was like that was a great sub in Because the game was called like 20 seconds later

Bright: Well, wasn't him, so they're showing. Yeah, no it was. Yeah, it was it was McSorley coming in at the 95th minute for Becher. And I, yeah. This other, ⁓ this other app I have for stats says he came out in the 90th. So obviously that's not right. And now that makes me wonder if I can trust, trust the player rankings, you know? ⁓ but yeah, yeah. So he came out in the 95th. So McSorley, right, gets one minute, ⁓ you know,

Kev: It was mixed, we were like, okay, yeah. Yeah. I was stupid. Yeah, I don't think he touched the ball. didn't do anything. You know, he was out there for what probably 40 seconds.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, Perez comes in at the 90th minute for Edelman. I don't even remember Totland coming in in the 89th minute. I don't even remember that. You know, so he came in for Santos. And then yeah, do. McNaughton came in for a Roscoe on the concussion protocol and then Toy Shirt came in for Cordova the 75th minute.

Kev: Okay, yeah, yeah. think I do remember that.

Bright: So, and then they...

Kev: How are we feeling about Cordova? Because I think I'm ready to wave the flag and move on, right? Like, come on June, get here so we can release him.

Bright: So, yeah. Move on, yeah. Yeah, now he definitely had a. Yeah, he had a better game and he played more centrally and what I said in the in the blog post in my immediate recap was that he's the poor man's job costs right like he's a little bit of a bigger body. He did OK with the hold up play, but he doesn't have enough creativity. He doesn't have the same, you know, raw talent, the same strength that Klaus has, and he hasn't shown any.

Kev: Yeah. Little bit,

Bright: you know, credible proof that he could score, right? doesn't have any goals, you know, yet. So ⁓ obviously he's not the answer and he's this villain guy. And I think most fans would rather see Toy Shirt or McSorley getting that time over Cordova at this point. You know, although again, he did play better than he did in New York.

Kev: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if he picks it up over the next couple of weeks, sure. OK, I don't foresee it. I think we're going to see kind of a lot of what we saw on Saturday. Hopefully no more of what we saw within DC. But I'd much rather see somebody else out there on the field. See ⁓ a McSwirly, see a toy shirt, see you name it. Sing Bin, ⁓ I don't know.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

Kev: I haven't seen him in ⁓ a couple weeks, I don't know what he's up to, but... ⁓ I'm good. I think I'm okay. I don't need to see anymore. I'm comfortable with it.

Bright: Exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah, I'd be perfectly fine with him not starting. And of course, we have some players coming back at some point over the next couple of weeks. So where does that fit in? know, I read I read something the other day that they was thinking about playing Louvin up top. Now, that surprises me a little bit. But you know, maybe maybe there's something there. You know, I don't know. I don't know.

Kev: Mm-hmm. That'll be nice, yeah. I don't know. There's an answer somewhere, right? There's an answer. Just finding it.

Bright: But I mean somewhere yes Yeah, there's there's definitely a better a combination at some point now when you look at the player rankings overall They were they were pretty decent respectable right so Cordova six point two still still on the lighter end but again improvement Thatcher six point six you need better from him Hardell only six point six. You know, yeah disappointing player, you know again, I thought he played well, so ⁓ you know huddle yeah i don't know

Kev: Erdo? Or... Yeah, I don't think he played bad. I don't know. I might be missing some stuff there, but...

Bright: Right, and I guess that's kind of where the 6.6 comes in. Yeah, Santo 7.2, which I did think he was more involved, but we have to talk about how terrible his crosses were. They were terrible. So, yeah.

Kev: Yeah. So across the first one. So but he had like three of them that were just like, what are you doing? Like, Michael, what are you doing? Yeah.

Bright: At least, at least. So he's got to fix that because he had the opportunity to serve a couple of ⁓ and you know, we saw him with this with go ahead.

Kev: Oui. I was gonna say, we talked about like how we like the zip that he puts on some of his crosses, like completely different, completely different from like O'Hurdle who kind of floats it, Wallum who relatively floats it to anywhere. ⁓ Yeah, he puts some zip, but he needs to harness that power that he's putting on some of these crosses. You can't kick it to the 18th row. What's he doing?

Bright: Yes, that's what I was just going to say. Yeah. No, just, yeah, just screwing up a lot of scoring opportunities, that's for sure. All right, Durkin and Edelman both had good games as far as player ratings go, 7.2 for Durkin and 7.7 for Edelman. Now Edelman had the giveaway that led to the goal, but then the assist that led to our goal. So you call it a wash. ⁓

Kev: If See you.

Bright: I did think Wallum played better and the player ranking say that he came in at 7.4. I don't think it was that good. And when I pulled up his individual stats, nothing jumps off the page for me as to why it was 7.4. I still think he played a lot of conservative passes, a lot of pass backs. I saw him try and do some one-on-ones. It didn't really work out for him. And then my biggest pet peeve was at the very end of the game. It was the very last minute. There were 30 seconds to play. he took the ball from a throw in and then immediately passed it back, referee blows the whistle. You I'm like, you have to know that there's like, there's literally only one play left. We had the throw in, all you have to do is throw it into the mixer and see what happens. That was the last play of the game and everybody knew it. And instead he plays it back and you lose that opportunity and it's a tie. So, Yep.

Kev: Mm-hmm. No time left. Yep. Yep. Yeah, you know, he played, I think, better. I didn't have too many quarrels with him in this game outside of, you know, some pullbacks. Well, maybe you should be pushing forward. The other big thing for me is crosses straight into the defense in front of him. He had like five, it felt like five crosses that went straight into the person.

Bright: Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.

Kev: standing three yards away.

Bright: Yep, yep, I agree. I don't know. Now stick on that for one second. I want to say before we move on that Bungardo was the man of the match and he had an 8.3 rating. So he played really well. Now I think, I think the big question is, as we kind of pivot, you know, going into the, you know, the U S open cup match tomorrow night is what does Demay do with this lineup? Because

Kev: directly into them.

Bright: He hasn't really made any significant changes to the starting 11 and going back to Wallum, I think we all think every week like, okay, we're going to see something different. Tottenham is going to be in there or something. And no, it's consistently Wallum. No St. Ben, no Tottenham, stop expecting it, Demay is just going to play Wallum.

Kev: Stop expecting it. Yeah, not just not just he He plays so many minutes too. It's not like he's coming out, you know at the 70th because Yeah, or 60th. No, he's in there full match, you know, don't don't expect anything Change it is what I've decided

Bright: The 60th minute, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and he's on the older, I don't know exactly how old he is, but I think he's, he's like in his thirties or something. Isn't he? like he's in theory, winded down in his career. So, you know, to be playing 90 minutes, maybe a little bit, a little bit strange, but I don't know. So now going into the U S open cup, do we see a big switcheroo in the lineup? You know, I've read some things that have said like, ⁓ no, they're, you know, they're expecting him to pretty much go with the same lineup minus one or two changes, which again would surprise me a bit, you know, cause the U S open cup might not mean as much in theory, obviously, ⁓ as you know, as the league. And we have of course, another game on Saturday, another away game, ⁓ in Seattle. ⁓ so we, you know, we have that coming at us.

Kev: ⁓ god. Yeah.

Bright: So, so right. so I don't know. mean, to me, I'm thinking, okay, this is an opportunity. You play most of your, your bench guys, you know, what gets in goal, ⁓ you know, mix sorely gets some time, ⁓ joiner, Totlins, you know, all of those guys that haven't necessarily gotten a lot of playing time. This is your, yeah, you get them all minutes and you know, you can do that to an extent, I guess.

Kev: Yeah, you get them all minutes.

Bright: Even with playing a lot of your starters, yeah, you want to get them in. I think some people want to see both the falls in there, in Backe and Fall of Fall. I think there's an opportunity for both of them to play. Now, Louvin, ⁓ he was out sick. I this guy can't catch a break. So he was out sick in this practice. So where does he fit in? ⁓

Kev: Either way. ⁓ ⁓ huh. Yup, get it back there. Yup. Yep.

Bright: You know, I don't know. So I think that's my biggest question mark going into this game is like, who's going to play? And, you know, to your earlier point, I think there is opportunity to continue getting momentum. Of course, this is a game that we should win against the team that we should be at the at Energizer Park, right?

Kev: Yeah. Get some confidence and some goal scoring, right? And some players that haven't seen a lot of minutes, get them some play in time. I would think that we see a lot of McSorley, see a lot of Joyner maybe. Those are two that I want to see. Hotlin, get him more in there. Toy shirt, like why not? Like get toy shirt in there more. Yeah, I mean.

Bright: Yeah, Tomlin, I think he's got to get some playing time. Yeah.

Kev: I want to see some of the younger guys in there, some of the guys that haven't gotten minutes, get them some playing time. I think we should be able to handle this team with ease, especially at home.

Bright: Well, yeah, you would hope so. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And if we're to go back in with a relatively same lineup on Saturday against Seattle, then definitely get your bench guys some playing time. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Kev: Okay. A little bit, yeah. Don't overextend your normal starters. I want to go back to Wallum's age, 25. 25. Yeah.

Bright: Yep. ⁓ he's okay. thought he was I thought he was older. So, okay All right interesting 25. All right Yeah, yeah, I guess so. All right a couple of a couple of quick things about the the match of tomorrow night So we're playing FC Tulsa, of course, they're in the USL Championship division So again, yes a team that we we should be beating ⁓ nine times out of ten ten times out of ten

Kev: No, no, so, yeah, he should have the legs to be able to play those minutes.

Bright: really. ⁓ This is the US Open Cup. It's the round of 32. So it's a win or go home game. This is a knockout tournament as I'm sure most most people know. The game is at seven o'clock tomorrow night. Wednesday night. It's the first time that these two clubs have ever met. You know, so certainly some unfamiliarity there. But the biggest thing with these types of games against USL teams.

Kev: Now, that makes sense. It does.

Bright: for FC Tulsa, this is something that they live for. The opportunity to come in and beat a team, beat the underdog.

Kev: Do it like that. be the underdog and come and be a team in their house and trying to get experience the fans booing them and yeah like who doesn't who doesn't love that

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I guess an MLS team, know, yeah, definitely, definitely. And I remember going to the old STLFC games against like Chicago and stuff like that. And, you know, the excitement that maybe we could we could steal one, even if they were playing their B team, you know, that was still a lot of fun.

Kev: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but that's what we need to be doing. Let's play our D &B team. You know, we should be taking this no matter what.

Bright: Sure, Yep, I would agree. Now a couple of things. The game is on Paramount Plus. So it's yes, it's not on Apple TV. So you got to watch out for that. It is still on ⁓ Y98 on the radio if you want to listen to that and our Spanish broadcast 102.9. So you got a couple of different options there, but you want to watch the game, you got to watch it on Paramount. Now, how much do you know about

Kev: Paramount Plus, yeah, I saw that.

Bright: the US Open Cup and the legacy not only of the tournament but St. Louis teams.

Kev: Just all of it. I know I know so much of it You can you could quiz me you could quiz me ⁓

Bright: Hmm. You're an expert, right? Well, you know, I to look up a couple of things, but you know, the big thing is I knew this, you know, this tournament has been around for over 100 years, right? So it's a great, a great tournament. Now, of course, we haven't had professional soccer around that often for that long. But we have amateur teams, semi pro teams, there's all kinds of of different teams that compete in this tournament. So it's kind of fun in the sense that anybody can go further than they should. Yeah, yeah, You know, for sure. But St. Louis has 10 total championships in this tournament. I think the last time we won was 1988 and it was a Bush team. The Bush like U23 team or something like that. So yeah, right, right. So pretty, you know, pretty.

Kev: This is always, yeah, it is what makes it fun. Yep.

Bright: Pretty cool. Same with Kudis. I think that was maybe the team that Dad played for back in the day. Kudis Funeral Homes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it'd be cool to see us win it one day. But again, you know, it's kind of one of those things like maybe you win a couple of the games and then all of a sudden you're like, all right, we're gonna start taking this seriously, right?

Kev: Doesn't that work? ⁓ huh. Yeah. You're janitor, huh? Okay.

Bright: You know, tomorrow night, maybe the round is 16. You kind of wait and see what happens. And if you win there, you know, you get to the final eight or to the semis. Certainly now you're in it to win it, right? Yeah, exactly. Then you can get excited.

Kev: Sorry. Then you can get excited. Yeah, yeah. I would say after making it through this round and getting to the final 16, I think that's when I'm going to be a little bit more into the cup, right?

Bright: Yeah, well then you usually start playing more MLS teams. yeah, yeah. So now.

Kev: Sure, yeah. And it doesn't feel so far away, right? Like, at 32, it still feels like...

Bright: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, now FC Tulsa, they're currently ninth in the USL West, so not great, you know. Doesn't look like they're having a great year, but they did win 4-2 against the Little Rock Rangers in the tournament, and then they won 1-0 against San Antonio FC. yeah, but for the league play, they're only 1-2 and 2.

Kev: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, yeah, they're out and see you in Antonio.

Bright: So only one win, two losses, two ties, five total points. And they just lost to Orange County SC, one nothing in their last fixture. So again, it kind of goes back to this is not a hot team. not, you know, the only thing they have going for them is that they're gonna be pumped up. You know, that's really, really about it. So I don't know.

Kev: This is not it. Yeah. Yeah. how many cup games have they played?

Bright: Two so far. Yeah, yeah. So we get, you know, we get the buy into the round of 32.

Kev: Yeah, it's felt like Yeah, it's always felt like, you know, going back to FC, like the US comp is much more fun for the USL teams trying to advance and tackle the giants right there in the MLS. So I don't have that excitement yet going into this game, but I might get there. I might get there. I'll be excited to see some of the young kids hopefully play.

Bright: store. Nah. And I do, I do. Yeah, I probably won't be able to watch the game. I'll be working. ⁓ And, you know, of course, I mean, if you could go to the game tomorrow night, I'm sure tickets are dirt cheap. I do wonder what the environment will be like. ⁓ You know, they were the city was giving away $20 tickets to season ticket members. So and it's also general. It's general admission. So you get in there, you can sit wherever you want.

Kev: Mm-hmm.

Bright: So that tells me they're not expecting a big crowd for a US Open Cup match midweek, right?

Kev: Yeah. Yep, completely makes sense. I'm gonna look that up actually and see what that is.

Bright: But if I were home, I would be going to this game if I were home. There's nothing else, again, $20 or you could probably buy them on SeatGeek for 12 bucks, sit somewhere different in the stadium. I've done that a couple of times, not used our seats. Yeah, kind of just, right, right, exactly. So I don't know, the vibe is still fun. It's still fun to.

Kev: Yeah, I'm looking now. Yeah, that'd be nice. Get a different view,

Bright: to be downtown and drink some beers and have some good food. They might have limited food options tomorrow night, I'm not sure.

Kev: looking at it here you got tickets say I want two tickets best price is $34 each including fees so that includes a $9 fee

Bright: Really? All right. That's interesting. So that is, I think that's the standard price. That's what they were selling tickets for, for non-season ticket holders and season ticket holders have the option to buy at 20 bucks. yep. All right. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe something, maybe something pops up pops up tomorrow and you can sneak down there. I don't know if the wife will let you do it or not, but

Kev: Yeah. We'll see what they drop down to. You never know. They might hold. You might see some...

Bright: Do you even have Paramount Plus? Do you even have the option to watch the game?

Kev: No, I don't. So it's either go to the game or listen to it on the radio, right? Or find that ⁓ Reddit channel that streams the ⁓ video game, right? Video game.

Bright: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. I have Paramount Plus for one more week and I already preemptively canceled it because they raised the price for I was paying like $80 a year. They raised it to $140 a year.

Kev: Yeah. What you watching on that though? What'd you even watch? don't even know what's on Paramount+.

Bright: Well... There are, there were a couple of things and right now I watch mainly Wrexham. I like being able to watch the Wrexham games and the championship. They're on Paramount Plus. Now what I might do, you know, I canceled that and then I might like go in with another email address, get the like three months free or whatever, whatever promo that they have or discounted price. And even with like Peacock, they were raising their price and I canceled.

Kev: ⁓ Yep.

Bright: And right before I canceled, know, I popped up and said, wait, stay $29 a year. And I was like, all right, you know, like I'll, I'll take that, you know? So yeah, right. Yes. If you have it, just go cancel and they'll, they'll give you an offer to stay. So yes, yes. You never know. But yeah. All right. Well, I don't know. Um, you know, I'm working, I fly home on Saturday. Uh, so

Kev: I'm gonna go cancel my peacock. Yeah, I have to do it, so.

Bright: Two things, one, I don't know if we'll be able to record another podcast before then, but if we can't catch up, I will put a little blog together for my overall thoughts. If you have any, feel free to send them to me. Send me your bullet point list and I'll incorporate them into the blog. And then, you know, we'll see. If we can get together, great. ⁓ If not, we'll come back at you next week for the recap. And I'm just hoping that I can watch the game on Saturday. Some of the...

Kev: Yep. Thank you.

Bright: My flights have Starlink and you can do whatever you want. So if I'm on a Starlink flight, I can just pull it up and stream the game, which would be nice to do that on my flight. But otherwise, I might.

Kev: Mm-hmm. You might not want to because I think this is going to be a hold on to your butts because third game or third game in a row on the road against Seattle who historically we haven't Haven't done well against some already once this year Yep, so might be a rough go. Yep

Bright: Yeah, and they just beat us at home. Yeah, exactly. yeah, yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah, maybe maybe this will be one where I bet on the loss, although I don't like doing that. It just doesn't feel right.

Kev: It doesn't feel good, but ⁓ you know money money does feel good so All right

Bright: Money is money. That's right. That's right. All right. All right. Well, let's ⁓ hopefully we see a win tomorrow night. We'll continue building that momentum and hopefully Wallum rides the pine.

Kev: video. Don't count on it

Bright: All right. That's going to be the title, I think.

Kev: I took count on it. Hasta luego!

Bright: All right, take care.