City SC Posse - Ep. 4: Matchday 2 Recap - No Belief. No Urgency.

Bright: Well, that was a rough one. ⁓ no doubt about it. I struggled the whole time watching this game. We sucked the whole game. We didn't have any good chances. ⁓ the only exciting part of the game was some big saves from Berkey.

Kev: Yeah, Berkey had ⁓ an active game. He had a lot of solid ⁓ saves for us, kept this game from being, you know, five nil. ⁓ Not much else can really be said positively. ⁓ It was a game to miss. If you missed it, you're happy.

Bright: We pro- for sure, you know, and Sunday night soccer, right? It's it's a nationally televised game. ⁓ was of course broadcast on Apple, had issues. don't know why they kept the feed cut out a couple of times. So then I moved over to FS one and honestly, I think I like their announcers better. ⁓ certainly their feed was better.

Kev: believe it all of a sudden you know watching the game ⁓ it's ⁓ you know one nothing we're down it goes to what I assumed was some kind of commercial for an injury break I wasn't sure what was happening jumps back on we're down to nothing and I'm left wondering what happened not surprised not surprised being away from the game for 30 seconds and we're coming back to a goal but

Bright: And they could just cut out. Yup. Yup. Yup. That's of course. That's all it takes. Yeah. Well, then even coming out of the first half, ⁓ they started the feed back into the game late, right? So like the second half had already started and I'm like, wait, like what are you doing? Apple.

Kev: ⁓ it was rough. Yeah. Yeah. I thought, I thought maybe I missed something. I'm sure I was down on my phone, looked up and was like, ⁓ I missed, you know, part of the game here, but.

Bright: No, no, but again, not like it matters. mean, we predicted some things we said right off the bat. We can't give up an early goal. And that's what we do. Yeah. That's what we do.

Kev: Yeah, I think I said the first 15 minutes were going to be important. Clearly, I should have ⁓ limited it to the first five minutes, first three minutes. ⁓ Yeah, that was key. That set the tone. We were down one nothing and nobody felt good about it from there.

Bright: No. ⁓ I definitely did not. mean, it looked like they were going to roll and to, again, to come out just losing, you know, two, nothing. ⁓ we, we got very lucky. I mean, another thing that we said in, in the last episode was that we're going to need Berkey to come up big. didn't really need them in the first game against Charlotte, but we were like, we, need him. We're going to need him against San Diego. And sure enough.

Kev: ⁓ yeah.

Bright: ⁓ you know, we were two for two on our predictions there. ⁓ Berkey had himself a great game. ⁓ you know, I don't know how he wasn't, ⁓ you know, the, one of the match day players of the day, ⁓ honestly, with all the saves that he had, I know he gave up two goals, so I guess that's probably why. ⁓ but not, not that he really had any chance on those. ⁓ so thanks. Thanks Berkey, I guess, for, you know, not making it embarrassing.

Kev: Probably it.

Bright: On the score sheet, at least when, when you look at the stats, it's still pretty embarrassing. ⁓ we had no shots on target, not a single one.

Kev: We I did not know that. And I don't know how that's possible. Based on some of the chances that we had, how we didn't have two goals. I don't know what Petra was doing. Put the ball in the back of the net, you're right there in front of you, just touch it on that cross. Like, I don't know. How we don't walk away.

Bright: Yeah, that one. And that was, that was eerily similar to the goal that Klaus scored, ⁓ his first goal of the game, the day before. So Klaus finishes that one. Betcher does not. think that's, that's the difference. And of course Klaus, you know, two games in, he's got three goals on the year. So starting strong with, with the galaxy. So, ⁓ you know, Betcher is, is not on the same level of, as Klaus, he should have scored that goal. Now we had another one that got cleared off the goal line. I guess they didn't count it as a shot on target. got cleared out by the defender. I don't know if that actually makes a difference. ⁓ and it, it, maybe it wasn't so much a shot as it was, ⁓ a deflection or some, you know, something else, but, but yeah, ⁓ officially it did not count as a shot. I know toy shirt, you know, he came in later the game. He was a spark, ⁓ Pompeo.

Kev: Yeah, I don't know how that's that. Could be, yep, yep.

Bright: Was a little bit of a spark and I want to touch on that in a little bit. Toy shirt had one or two opportunities that got close, went just wide, you know? So again, no, no official shot on, on target. had two shots, zero on target. They had six shots, three on target two went in a possession though. This is, this is where. Yep.

Kev: Mm-hmm. ⁓ No, wait, wait. Before you tell me what it is, I know on the last game, I thought we had dominated the game. And this was when we were there live. And it was in like 54 % possession for that first game.

Bright: And it was closer than you thought. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kev: This game felt obvious, like obviously they had the ball the whole time. They had to have had the ball the whole time. You're probably gonna read off and it's gonna be like 55 % or something like that. But I didn't feel like we had possession at any point in the game. We had some chances but.

Bright: Right. Yeah. The eye test. Yeah. The, eye test tells you that they had the ball to hold the game. The official possession was 63 to 37. So that's yeah. I mean, anything, anything above 60%, you know, you're definitely controlling the game, but here is a key stat number of passes. They had 637. We had 387.

Kev: All right. All right, yeah, that lines up probably more with what I was expecting. Brutal.

Bright: So pretty drastic difference there in the number of passes and their pass accuracy was 91%. Ours was 85%. Also, there weren't a lot of falls. They had one fall. had three. Like that, that's not a lot. And that's not normal for us. So what that tells me, and again, coming back from the eye test, we were content just letting them kick the ball around. You know, we were hanging back, trying to survive. Exactly.

Kev: Yep, just trying to survive and ⁓ get back to our old game of the counter attack, what we've seen previously.

Bright: Yep. Yep. But which, right. Which we did not have a good counter attack. weren't really fast enough. They had a, you know, enough possession that, that we couldn't really mount a true counter attack. Whenever we did have the opportunity, Wallum would run down the wing, step on the ball and pass it back. Like, know, it, ⁓ it is the worst and that is the one thing. So Pompeo came in. It's his first action of the season.

Kev: Hey, we like when he does that, don't we?

Bright: Came in and at least that was something he'll take the ball to the corner. He'll take on players one-on-one, which are other wide midfielders will not do one. They're not, they're not fast enough to do it too. I'm assuming they don't have the one-on-one dribbling skills necessary to do it. And so they rely on passing the ball back. Well, you're not going to score any goals when you're passing the ball backwards, man.

Kev: Mm-hmm. That's the one I do. No, yeah, that killed me at the end of the game. We're down to nothing. And that's what we're doing with the last second of the game is pulling it back, bringing it back to the defense. And I'm like, we've got maybe 30 seconds left in this game. At most, why aren't we pressing?

Bright: Right? So the other thing was along that same line, even when we didn't have the ball, there's five minutes left in the game. We're down to nothing and they're just passing the ball back, back and forth between their center, ⁓ their center backs. And we're just, we're just hanging back, letting them do it. And no, there was no will to go get the ball. Even if you get a fall, went out three falls, we like attack these guys, try and take the ball back.

Kev: Work in time. Yeah.

Bright: and mount a little bit of an offensive push at the very end of the game. You score one, you know, you never know.

Kev: Yeah, chances, you you're just hoping for something after that.

Bright: You know, and, and, and toy shirt had a couple of chances. So, you know, on, on the FS one broadcast, they were talking about belief. And to me, the only players that showed any belief were toy shirt, Pompeo and Berkey. That's it. You know, those are the only three players. So now I start thinking, even with the new coach, the new sporting director, I'm starting to think that the mindset of our players is already set in stone.

Kev: Breaking up. Yep.

Bright: You know, we're a losing club. We can't score. We can't come back. I watched the second half of the Miami game right before us. They were down two, nothing to start the second half to Orlando. What do think the score was of that game to finish?

Kev: Two to two. Three to two.

Bright: No, I, you know what I honestly, I think it was four. I think it was four to two. I think it ended four to two Miami, either three or two or four to two Miami. So like they came out believing that they were going to score that they could come back and win that game. And we do not have that belief.

Kev: You got it, yep. What has given you the belief that we can go out and score a goal?

Bright: Nothing. I don't know. Maybe, maybe bringing in toy shirt and, ⁓ Cordova once he gets into the game, like right now.

Kev: We don't have like. You know, they've been on Reddit. probably have the same belief I have, like, we can't finish. Soon as we go down one nothing, they know, ⁓ it's done. We're not scored.

Bright: Yeah, right. But it's different. It's different as a player though, come on, you know, and then as a fan. Alright.

Kev: It is. It's got to be different. It's got to be different, right? Like you got to believe in your skill set, believe in your team and.

Bright: So after week two, we are in second to last place. I know that it's early. We're only, we're only two games in, but right. That's how I feel. I feel like we're settling in now. Bottom of the table. ⁓ every other team, except for us in Kansas city has won a game in our conference. So there's only two teams that, that came back, ⁓ and couldn't produce a result in week two. So, ⁓

Kev: Feels good. Feels good. Settle it in. Yeah. ⁓ No. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Bright: You know, so we're, we're negative two in gold differential. have one point against Charlotte. Now Charlotte came out and they had a, a stinker of a game against the galaxy and lost three, nothing. So that tells me that they're not a great team, you know, so tying against them at home probably becomes even worse. And, know, in our next episode, we'll preview the Seattle game. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. but, but that ain't looking good for us either. That's that's for sure.

Kev: Good to see you. Yep. Even worse. Yep. Yeah, it could be a stinker of a start, first three games. Again, we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves with Seattle on this episode, but you knew going into this game it was going to be a battle. You were hoping, like I said, I'm pretty sure we mentioned it on the past episode. You're just hoping to come away with a tie. I know you didn't feel that way. You were hoping to come away with a win.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. With one point. Right, sure.

Kev: I think most of us would have been happy with the tie. We would have been pretty happy with the tie.

Bright: Well, especially with the possession as bad as it was, you know, but we couldn't, we couldn't even come away with one goal or a shot on goal for that matter. So part of the issue might, might be our starting 11 here, you know, for this game. Now we know that, ⁓ that Louvin was out. We knew that going into it, health issues, family issues. I understand. ⁓

Kev: Yeah, me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think the surprise, the part.

Bright: Hardell was a little bit of a surprise. And then when I looked into it, I'm like, okay, his wife's having a baby. Okay. Sometimes life happens. get that. But without those two guys in the lineup, you know, we're a completely different team. Instead, we had to have Miggy in the lineup and you know, he's not a starter in this league. You know, obviously I think the hope is that eventually he should be, or he has that potential. And, know, having, having them on the roster this year, great. He's homegrown talent, but he's still really young. and to have him starting and again, you know, I guess, ⁓ the coach came out and said, you know, they want to reward people that have been working hard at practice. Like, all right, I get that. But, you know, again, wallum he's getting older. He, we know he can't do it. Like how is Pompeo not starting over wallum? ⁓ a Roscoe gets the start over Totland. Now Totten comes in and then he comes out. So I don't know what his injury status is, but now, you know, now he's out. And, ⁓ you know, think Totland gives you a little bit more offensive, you know, he's fast. He can run down that wing. He can do the overlap. ⁓ you know, and then betcher, you know, I, again, I think he's a, should be a come in off the bench guy late in the game. If you're down, bring some spark. ⁓ but ⁓ as a starter, he's, he's not going to cut it. So whether it's toy shirt or Cordova at some point in the future, ⁓ but we were, we were outworked here dryer. You know, I think, I think he w he got the early goal. and, and that, was predicted, I think too. Yeah. It was easy.

Kev: Yeah, he was disappointing, obviously. Just a touch goal too, just a touch. Like that easy little touch he had on that, I think it was a volley, I can't remember. He made it look easy, that's for sure.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a volley and he just, you know, side-vollied it in, made it look easy. And I think he had the best odds to score first when it came to, to betting. So I know we both made some, some bets. went a little bit different with this one because I had the promotional credits. ⁓ you know, I was trying to win them. So I made three bets. made one for city to win or tie.

Kev: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Right. So the odds were a little bit less, but I'm like, Hey, yet, you know, if we could come, I didn't really think we were going to come away with the wind, but at least a tie. I'll win some money. bet the over on the corner kicks and lost that one. ⁓ I went over 10 and a half and I think there were nine corners. ⁓ well, we had a lot of. Yeah. We had a lot of corners though, last game. And I was like, San Diego is going to get a lot of corners. So if that holds up, then you know, we might.

Kev: What were you thinking? You mentioned the last game. Go the under.

Bright: End up, so it ended up being seven to two. They had seven and then we had two. and I don't know, we just, we just didn't have enough offense to get anymore. So I lost that one. And then I put, um, $5 down on San Diego to win or tie, which paid out. was minus four 95. Well, that was my, that was my promotional bet. You're allowed to go up to minus 500. So it was pretty much a guarantee. Um, when it came to. to the betting odds. they gave me $200 in promotional credits, uh, in $25 increments. So I have eight bets that I got to make for, doesn't all have to be in the city game, but I got to make eight bets and they're in $25 increments and they expire, I think on like Saturday or Sunday. So I have to do it right away. I didn't realize they'd expire.

Kev: I'm questioning your judgment here. I would have used the promotional bet on the city tire win, maybe even the city win, and then thrown your real, I'm assuming this is like real life money versus kind of like fake money that could eventually come into your account.

Bright: No, no, no, it was right. It was all real life money because I didn't, hadn't placed a bet on draft Kings yet. So I had to place the $5 bet. And if I won that bet, they gave me $200 in promotional. So I went with the, the more sure bet, ⁓ the minus four 95, ⁓ and again, they cap you at minus 500. So I went with as close as I could get really to a sure thing. And now moving forward, I have the promotional bets and I'm not sure how that works. Cause if I bet the $25 promotional bet and I win.

Kev: Mmm. Okay, I'm with you. I'm with you. Yeah, yeah. promotional back.

Bright: Money? Can I cash that money out? I'm assuming yes.

Kev: No, there's always some kind of like stipulation on you have to make so many bets or you know, put that money so far ahead. Like you have to win, win and win that money and then eventually it becomes yours. But you'll have that, like that's how they get you. You think that you're getting this money at some point in time, but you have to keep winning it like 30 times and then eventually it becomes yours, right? They're not just, they're not in the business of generally just giving away money.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right, so it's a... Right, sure. Well, that's what I was like. Of course.

Kev: So they're going to make it as hard as possible to get it. And they are not expecting you to string together 30 butts in a row, right? That are going to end up hitting and eventually convert that money to real USD.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Alright, well maybe I'll throw him down on some long shots or something.

Kev: Yeah, that's the way you'd like to do it, So I ⁓ did some small dollar bets on this one because I didn't feel good about anything as I was looking over the book. I did put down ⁓ a $5 bet on ⁓ City to Win or Tie. Same thing, I think it was plus 140. And then I did a bet your bet. ⁓ Anytime goal scorer. I can't remember what the...

Bright: What about you? Did you hit anything? Now. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Kev: what the plus was on it, but it felt good. think it was like plus 400, somewhere in that range. and boy, did he have the chance to make me a little bit of money, right? And it just didn't happen. Didn't happen. So usual stuff.

Bright: Yeah. And he had a tap in, he had the tap in. Unbelievable. Well, ⁓ yep. Well, you know, we'll talk, we'll talk, ⁓ betting odds for the Seattle game. ⁓ and our next episode we'll, preview that match. ⁓ I'm going with the other brother. So I'll be down at the stadium, ⁓ take in, take a John boy to the game. And I don't know if he knows it yet, but you know, part of the stipulation, well, one, they're my ticket. So he's got to buy the, got to buy the beer. Right. So that's number one. And two, he's going to now have to come be a guest on.

Kev: He's buying beer. Yeah. Yeah.

Bright: On the next couple of episodes to do the, to at least do the, game recap. we'll, we'll see if we can get them on, ⁓ next week for match day three recap. ⁓ yup. All right. Well, we're right. ⁓ we're right at time. So great episode. Thanks to our listeners. had a successful launch, ⁓ with our first three episodes, ⁓ already outperforming, ⁓ the NFNP podcast, ⁓ which is my other podcast. So.

Kev: ⁓ we'll get them on it. Yeah. I think that's a good call.

Bright: ⁓ clearly people are more interested in soccer than they are politics and other things. ⁓ but certainly go check out, ⁓ NFNP pod, go check out our website, NFNP pod.com. Give us a like, give us a follow, ⁓ and we'll keep rolling here. We'll see you at the next episode for the preview of match day three.

Kev: Adios!