For the Glory KC: Sporting KC v Dallas Thoughts, SKC/Seattle and KC Current Previews

For the Glory KC is back with the 21st episode of the show!

On this week’s only episode (we were out of town at that Sporting KC and FC Dallas game), Sheena and I look back at said loss in Frisco. We have plenty of thoughts on the game, from both an in-person and re-watch perspective. Plus, we preview this Saturday’s showdown with the Seattle Sounders coming to Kansas City.

Because we previewed the game off an eight+ hour drive, we left out all the Seattle international absences.

We also get a chance to preview the season opener for the KC Current who face the North Carolina Courage in the league’s first game of the weekend. And it couldn’t be avoided, so we talk about this nonsense with the Soccer Capitol podcast rebranding as River City Ramble.

Here is a quick rundown of topics (and approximate start times):

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The temporary intro/outro music is by Kristian Leo and is from the song “Ride it Like You Mean It.”

Update 3/24/23: Sorry for the wait, the transcription is available to pull. Here it is, with only light edits. Post your favorite typos in the comments!

Transcript from Revoldiv

We’re back. Just like I said we’d be back. This is For The Glory KC where we bring a mix of in-depth Kansas City soccer knowledge and a more casual perspective. 

I’m Chad Smith, one of your co-hosts and the editor at TheBlueTestimate.com. I’m going to take you a bit more in-depth and then Sheena is my co-host. I should say Cool Hand, Sheena Smith, my wife and co-host who gives that more casual perspective. What’s up Sheena? Why would I be Cool Hand? That’s weird. It’s a wrestling nickname again as always. 

If you know, you know, go into AEW on Wednesday recording this on Tuesday. But on today’s show we’re going to talk about that loss at Dallas. We were there. It’s probably our fault we jinxed it. 

We’re also going to preview Sporting Kansas City, Placing the Seattle Sounders this weekend and the Kansas City Current season is starting. So preview their battle with the North Carolina Courage and there’s a bit of a controversy going on out there with Sporting Kansas City and a St. Louis Space Podcast that we might have some time to chat about as well before we get to the digital crawl. But Sheena, let’s talk about this trip we took to Dallas from a fan experience perspective versus from a like it sucks that sporting lost a game perspective. Yeah. 

So we made the check out to Dallas and I will say one of the positives is I really enjoyed the soccer hall of fame. That was pretty cool. I think we had fun at that. You think you had fun? You’re not sure if you had fun? I had fun. I don’t know if you did. 

Did you have fun? Yeah, it was definitely very interesting. It’s not the biggest thing in the world and I’m glad that I was like wearing my sporting gear because they gave me like a match day discount for arriving. So that was kind of a plus because I don’t know that I got my money’s worth if I had to pay full price. So it was nice that we got a little discount for sure. But it was cool. It’s definitely cool to see the history and the trophies and our daughter loved the interactive parts where you could build your own jersey and put yourself into photos like green screen photos. So like cool little stuff on screen, which is good for the kids. Yeah, I really liked that and I thought the history was interesting. 

You probably need less than an hour there. But if you are in Dallas, especially if you’re planning to go see Dallas FC, I would recommend doing it beforehand. There’s a bunch of places to eat around the area. 

However, I don’t know that I loved the FC Dallas environment at the game. I we that was our first time in Dallas. And I would say overall we’ve attended quite a few road games. I was counting and granted some of the stadiums we’ve been to more than once like LAFC and LA Galaxy. So I think I had it that we’ve been to eight or nine road games. And this by far was the worst of the games and not just because of how the game played like our track record of going to road games isn’t very good. 

We had figured out at some point that day like how many wins and losses and draws in all our days. But the do you remember that stat before I move on? Yeah, it was two wins. We saw a win against LA Galaxy and the first ever win against LAFC in their stadium and then a draw against Minnesota and all the other games we’ve been to, including another Galaxy, another LAFC, San Jose, Colorado, all losses. Yeah, so not a great like a road record for us. But I mean, I think that’s probably common because it’s a road game. But, you know, there’s been things from each stadium I’ve been able to take away as like a pro. 

And I don’t really know that I had one for Dallas. It was by far the worst fan base experience that FC Dallas fans were, I think, casual fans at best. We got heckled in the supporter's area. The crowd for sporting the people we were sitting around were awesome. Like I really liked them. 

It was probably the most I’d say that was the best part of the game is that we interacted with a lot of the people around us, which we I would say we haven’t really done much of before. And by we do you mean I interacted and you sat quietly and I tried to pull you into some of these conversations. I did sometimes. 

Afterwards, Sheena was saying to me, this is like my mom when she goes places. This is Sheena’s mom that when she goes places, she just talks to everybody. And I was like, well, of all the places to go, this is the place I should talk to people. I like have something in common with these people around me. Let’s engage them on this. So, you know, maybe I got some new podcast listeners or some followers. Shout out, y’all. I think you are checking out the pod for the first time after you met us. I think you were more promoting the Blue Testament in all honesty. 

That’s what I heard. Yeah. That’s what I heard you promoting, which is totally fine because I wouldn’t have enjoyed the limelight on me at all. But we did meet someone and they knew who both Sheena and I were like, they like reached out chat and I was like, yeah. And then I was like, oh, you got to meet Sheena. She’s on the pod with me. 

And they’re like, he’s like, I listen all the time. So hey, shout out there. Appreciate that. Yes. 

I’m sorry. I’m so awkward in person. But back to these bad Dallas fans, I agree because there was a lot of people kind of heckling us. There was a guy like right next to our row that would turn and like scream at us every time something would happen. But the fans were so uninvolved in the game. Like it’s just like you see on TV where it’s like, are they are they cheering? Are they interested in the game? No, no, they’re not. Because as you look around the stadium, their supporter section is this tiny sliver in the corner where Kansas City obviously has supporter sections on both ends of the pitch. They have this little sliver in the corner because they can’t get enough people to be hardcore. And then what really got me about these fans, we were also heckled by children, which is kind of funny, but they all a bunch of people like the same as half empty with like 15 minutes to go in the game, not including stoppage time. It was like the 75th minute and they’re like emptying out of there. And what made what maybe was the most annoying thing to me was this kid was heckling us as he’s walking by and I’m like, you’re heckling us. 

You’re leaving the game is tied right now. And he goes, oh, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to win. 

And he’s like, oh, I was so annoyed that he was right and they did ultimately end up winning. But he was like harassing us as he left the stadium, which I thought was ridiculous. Probably his parents' call. 

He was definitely not old enough to have taken himself to the game. The kids were because there was those kids and then behind us, there was some kids. I don’t know that they were doing as much heckling, but the heckling from like probably tweens was interesting. And it’s like, where are these parents? I also want to say that at the beginning of the game, I was totally annoyed because I was trying to record kickoff on my phone and people were coming up and down the aisles and I was getting really annoyed. And I think it’s like, there wasn’t a lot of hardcore fans. Like you didn’t see a lot of people in FC Dallas, jerseys or even team colors. 

It was very bizarre. And it was St. Patrick’s night. Like St. 

Patrick’s Day was the day before. So I think they were supposed to be celebrating it at the game, but it wasn’t even like I saw a ton of green either. So I think it’s like because nobody was hardcore, they just kind of strolled in and maybe it’s because traffic spot. I don’t know, but I was pretty pissed off at the beginning of the game for like the first 15 because so many people were coming in. So not only the first 15, but then like before halftime with like 10 minutes to go in the half, then they’re all getting up to leave to go get concessions. I was like, is anybody sit in their seat and actually watch the game? It really threw me off. 

And maybe it’s just because Kansas City sports fans are so hardcore and they care about their team so much. But I definitely saw just as many people wearing like Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars gear Cowboys. Yeah, Cowboys as FC Dallas. There was like not a lot of support for FC Dallas. So and also one into the stadium. I didn’t even realize there’s no fans like behind one of the goals, the non-haul of fame side of the field. There’s nothing. There’s just like a. It’s like a stage with like a huge FC like thing that lights up and a big screen. 

Yeah, some like flamethrower things over there, which were nice. because it was cold and we could feel the heat off those flamethrowers. Yeah, it was a night. I mean, it was a night so that we had the flames towards us weird. There was no supporters. I don’t know. 

It was probably my least favorite stadium that I’ve been to so far. And I definitely didn’t like the crowd. Maybe if we had gone to like the barbecue thing beforehand and we met some of the hardcore fans, I’d feel differently. But by the time we finished shooting, we didn’t have time. Yeah, that’s true. 

We didn’t get over to the tailgate that we were invited to by their supporter section. So, you know, kudos to those that invite us. The beer guardians, I believe they were called, which I thought was kind of. That is a good name. Yeah, it is a fun name. So, yeah, very, very bizarre. Not really sure what that was about. 

But yeah, Dallas as a city didn’t make a strong impression of us even outside of this game because the drivers there are terrible. I was just like, if I never drive in this city again, it’ll be too soon because they’re just they’re either going 40 miles an hour where it’s 70 or they’re going 100 miles an hour where it’s 70. So it was just a little disheartening to deal with the traffic all the time. And there was traffic every day of the week. I was like, what is happening? It’s so much traffic on Saturdays and Sundays. Like, you don’t even have to go to work. 

Why is there so many of you on these roads? Sheen had barely drove in the city, but on her last little thing, I’m going to share this, Sheena. She she’s driving back. We had come back from Waco. We spent some time in Waco and we’re driving back and she says, I just they’re stressing me out so much. I just want to cry because she basically lets me drive when we’re in other cities. 

But they’re just their maniacs. They fly up on you and they’re flying around you or they’re they’re dropping down to go super below the speed limit. Like, what does make up your mind? Like, let’s just get together and move here, people. 

Yeah, I had like secondhand stress just being a passenger. I was stressed out. I felt like we were almost always in an accident, which is maybe a little dramatic on my part. 

But yeah, not super impressed with Dallas. It’s granted a lot more people than Kansas City. And I think we’ve just been away from traffic for too long. So any kind of traffic kind of annoys me a little bit. 

But let’s talk about that game. I feel like we’ve talked enough about Dallas and their fans. But let’s talk about the game itself and the loss that sporting had against Dallas. So I’ll let you start, Chad. All right. 

Well, let’s start with the positive. Sporting Kansas City scored their first goal of the season. So I thought that was good. Daniel Salloi got off a shot. It was deflected and it went in. So I can’t get too excited about it because we were saying in our supporter section to each other like, oh, yeah, this is it. You know, the floodgates are going to open. 

But then as they didn’t open the rest of the game, it made me think, you know what, getting that first goal as a lucky goal, deflection goal, it’s not what they need, right? They need to be clinical and they need to find a way to have made a bunch of precise passes or play a really good pass that led to the shot that led to the goal. And it was just like, they kind of got lucky, you know, it bounced off and it went in. And maybe that’s why everything went against them for the rest of the game. Not that the whole rest of the game was terrible. So a lot of people kind of losing their mind. 

And I think it’s more in the four games as a cumulative and the fact that there’s no wins yet, two losses and two draws than anything else. But that was a bit of a downer that the goal didn’t lead to something more. No points were even earned the first time you score versus they’ve earned two draws when they didn’t score. I agree with that. 

I think that it was a frustrating game to watch because there were opportunities, not as many opportunities as I would say the past couple games, but it, you know, it was kind of a luck of a draw that Salloi got that goal. And then we saw some missed goals, especially the two PKs. So I still feel like we’re in that situation where we still need goals. We obviously at this point need wins, but it was kind of a lackluster game. It didn’t really feel like at any time I felt like they were super threatening. I don’t know what your thoughts on that are. 

Yeah, it felt like many of the problems that we’ve been talking about in prior weeks where they’re just not decisive enough. I rewatched the game. So I watched it partially while Sheena was driving us home and then she just finished it. We were just getting back on Tuesday night and we’re already recording on Tuesday night, but I came home from driving and immediately watched the rest of the game. 

And there was just moments where sporting were looking like they were make a play on the break. Like there was one specifically, I remember Salloi’s driving and he just kind of cuts the ball back and slows down and doesn’t make this pass he could have made into. I think it was both Ben Sweat overlapping him on one side and it got a making a run up the middle play it to either guy and you’re pushing and Dallas is running towards their own net and something could happen. 

And then, you know, Kyrie’s kind of famous for doing that. He did that at least once that really stood out to me where a long ball had been played over the top to him and he just didn’t keep going. He just turned around and made a back pass. 

And I think that if they’re going to play this style, which they’ve been playing a little bit lately where they’re not possessing the ball as much, you have to be willing to go quick and try to attack on the counter and they’re not really 100% doing that. So turning back to the PKs that you mentioned though, that just tied straight into the Salloi situation for me because he gets the lucky goal and then it’s like the soccer god said, now you’re not going to score. Looking back and watching them again, Eric Tommy’s PK is really bad. He’s at the perfect height for the keeper to save it and it’s, you know, obviously if he guesses the wrong way, it goes in. No big deal, but he didn’t guess, you know, he guessed the right way. 

And then the other one, Agata places the ball really well. He just doesn’t hit it hard enough. And watching again, we saw this live where after Tommy takes the ball from Agata when they get to retake the PK, we’re watching Fanta’s kind of console him. And then on the broadcast, it was on there too. On the broadcast, you could see they had this like low angle that was shooting across, really just watching Tommy set up to take the kick, but you could see Fanta’s in the background kind of putting his arm around Willie and walking him out and he just looks so dejected and you know, strikers need confidence and nobody on this team seems to have goal scoring confidence, but maybe Salloi will have some kind of like accidental confidence because he did get one even if it wasn’t, it’s probably not even the best shot he’s taken all year, right? He’s probably had better shots than that. And this is just the one that got lucky and put off a defender and caught Martin Posco in the wrong way. Speaking of Posco, real quick, and then I’ll let you jump back in here. 

Did you see that for the third straight week, the goalkeeper that faced Sporting Kansas City is the MLS goalkeeper of the week? I did not, but that’s not surprising. Yeah. He’s the one I feel like that actually kind of earned it. He stopped two penalties, right? If either one of those goes in, it’s a different game. I mean, they either in the draw or you know, the game plays out differently. You don’t play the game the same if you’re ahead versus if you’re level. 

And the same thing for Dallas, if they’re chasing to get a goal, they might be opened up to giving up another goal on the counter. So he probably is the first of these three goalkeepers to actually really earn it. Bond, maybe a little bit. Definitely not Yarbrough the week before Kansas City just hitting them right at the keeper so they can be goalkeeper of the week. I saw somebody tweet, it might have been Mike Coon saying, I want to pre-congratulate Stefan Fry, the Seattle Sounders goalkeeper for winning goalkeeper of the week next week. 

I mean, yeah, at this rate, probably. We definitely are lacking confidence. I would say as a whole, like it’s not just our strikers and our offense. It’s, I feel like everybody, I don’t feel like there’s anybody on the team who is confident. And we were talking about this on the drive home. 

And really, I think what I’ve been saying after the loss is that going forward, we need to, like the lineup needs to be different. And that’s really what I hope happens this weekend against Seattle is that, you know, I feel like there are some people who are playing worse than others, i.e. Ben Swett. I was going to cough and say Ben Swett. Yeah. So, you know, I’d like to see somebody else if Leibold isn’t better. I think Chad, you mentioned Kate and Pierre maybe playing in that spot. Yeah. 

So he only got to play there for five minutes plus stoppage time, but I thought he looked really dangerous. He’s playing out of position, but he can’t get on the field because Graham Zusi, he’s been playing pretty well, right? There’s no reason to bench Graham, other than to, you know, rotational purposes or for rest and whatnot. But I think Pierre out of position might be better than Ben Swett in his natural position based on what I’ve seen because looking back, Swett had two really bad giveaways. 

The second one is the one that led to the goal. The first one, he kind of gets lucky because Dallas ends up shooting a decent opportunity over the bar. But looking back, I don’t know what he was doing. Like in the stadium, we had a lot of the people around us. blaming Peter Vermes for not subbing Sweat off a couple minutes earlier because he got subbed off right after that. I think that’s, there is an argument because he had been fouled and kind of injured, but I don’t know what he’s doing. He has a chance on that play that ends up giving it up and they score a goal. He could have gone to Fontes. 

He had Remy Voltaire open and then he like turns and cuts back on himself and dribbles into himself and then tries to play it up the side, I think, but he plays it right into a Dallas player and they just quickly transition and end up getting the goal. So yeah, Ben Sweat should not be starting. Let’s just hope Tim Leibold tells you, but if not, I’m down for Kayden Pierre. Are you down for Kayden Pierre? I’m down with Kayden Pierre, for sure. I feel like Ben Sweat is more of a liability. It feels like for every, he was in there, you know, making some defensive plays at times, but it’s like every time he had a good player to, he’d give up a really bad one and ultimately, you know, one led to a goal and maybe he should have, well, he definitely should have come out sooner. So I do kind of blame Peter for me is also for waiting so long to make that change and bring on Kayden Pierre. I just, you know, I like to see Kayden Pierre on more. I’m always a Felipe Hernandez fan and I don’t feel like he’s really getting enough time on the field to get in his rhythm. And I have to imagine when you’re only getting on for 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes at a time, it’s hard to really click with the team and find your rhythm. So I’d like to see, I mean, at this point, we’re not doing great. We haven’t won a game. 

Why wouldn’t we switch up the lineup and try something different, even if Polito comes in and plays on Saturday, which assuming he even makes the bench, like, I don’t think he’s going to start like we need something different. We should have someone else come in for Kyrie. I know Jean-Ys Marinos is going to be off-plane in Cyprus. 

You know, you say his name backwards every time. I don’t care. Marinos Tzionis. 

Well, whatever. You know who I mean. It’s not like you don’t know who I mean when I say it. That’s fair. Yes, you’re right. He’ll be, he’ll be away with Cyprus, so he’ll not be available. So get ready for Khiry Shelton to start again. I want to talk about a few of those things you talked about. 

So Hernandez, I agree. It’s why not give this guy a shot to start over Roger. People have been kind of picking on Roger, and I think they’ve been picking on Zusi too, which feels unfair because I think Zusi’s been fine, honestly, but I don’t think Roger has been as good. He’s good defensively. He’s sound defensively. He’s kind of doing the thing where he’s all over the place, but he’s just, he’s a step or two slower. 

I don’t think he should be starting every game, even as they work back to this, you know, permanent formation. Hopefully Remy eventually just moves forward in the midfield and the Nemanja Radoja is playing defensive midfielder and they’re all kind of where they’re supposed to be. But one thing I would really like to see with Hernandez being a starter potentially is he delivers a really good free kick, whether it’s a corner kick or a set piece. He has the ability to deliver these balls and they’re, they’re more dangerous than the ones Tommy’s putting in, in my opinion. I tried to bring this up with a couple of the guys at the home game against the Galaxy and the Press Box, and some of them were like, no, Tommy has a really good delivery. 

I think Felipe is just better though. And I think if you go back and look and see his delivery versus Tommy had been taking all the corners and everything up to that point, that you’re going to see that Felipe put in some more dangerous balls and they just weren’t, they weren’t put away. Like I gotta have that header that he should have put away. Actually, that wasn’t even from Felipe. That was like a Zusi ball. But the point still stands. 

Lots of good chances were thrown in there and nobody really finished him off. Do you think people just love Eric Tommy for how he played last season? Like I think he’s been a hustler. Don’t get me wrong. But like he hasn’t wowed me like the way he wowed me last season. And maybe, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of issues with everyone on the field. But I don’t know. I just feel like, yeah, if Felipe Hernandez is better at bringing those, those free kicks, like why wouldn’t we have him on the field more? I feel like everyone just thinks so highly of him. 

And by all means, it’s well deserved. But I don’t know. Like I’m not like super impressed with him. Like I still prefer Remy. I think Remy is more solid. I don’t know. 

What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think Tommy’s been pretty darn good. He’s never seems like he can go 90 full minutes the way he plays. He’s just like he runs too much. And he’s not like Remy and that Remy can run super hard and stay out there the whole time. What’s interesting is I, I heard an interview with Remi and he was talking about, I don’t think he meant to, but he kind of accidentally threw Tommy under the bus saying he likes playing the number six role he was talking about. This maybe is on the Sporting KC show saying he likes to play the number six because he can kind of direct traffic and he can help people when they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do. And he said like, Eric sometimes doesn’t know where he’s supposed to be and I can help him get where he’s supposed to be. 

And I thought that was funny. And I thought that’s probably just not trying to be rude or anything. Just maybe like a cultural difference and being like a French player. And like as a German player, Tommy probably is like all business and doesn’t mind that either. But I could see someone taking that the wrong way as like a bus toss. 

But no, I think Tommy’s been pretty good. But obviously, you know, if we’re not going to Neumannia Rodoya being a starter yet, I would like to see Hernandez get a shot over Roger and see if he can kind of handle and do the things Roger’s done because he’s a hustler. He’s all over the field. He works really hard. 

One thing we moved on from this and I wanted to mention because it only feels fair. We like to trash-bin sweat on this podcast, but he did have the pass that led to the penalty and that was a play where sporting transitioned very quickly and they only made a few like they quickly ran into space and they made sharp passes and they were direct and they went after the game and they just need to do that more because they drew a penalty there. They almost drew another penalty later just putting pressure on whomever they’re playing in this case Dallas. 

So anything, oh go ahead. Yeah, that’s what I was saying earlier. It’s like for every good play he makes, he makes three bad ones and I would say the same. Well, that’s a little dramatic. It’s too hard. 

But okay, two, you know, for every two mistakes he makes, there’s one really good one and the same can sometimes be said for Kyrie. Kyrie looked good at Tynes in that game and then he looked horrible at other points. So and that’s pretty typical, but it’s a bigger issue if you’re the defender making a horrible mistake, right? If Kyrie makes a mistake and turns the ball over, he’s probably far down the field. 

Maybe it kills an attack. Maybe it leads to a counterattack. You never know, but it’s not as impactful as when you’re a defender and you screw up. Kind of like that first game when there was big mistakes, that led to a goal. So that made a mistake in that game. Gosh, it’s a trend, right? He’s had two mistakes that have led to goals that both cost boarding the game against Portland and against Dallas. So it just hurts so much more when you screw up in the defensive end of the field. Yeah, there was one other thing. We were talking about this in the car and I just wanted to bring it up. 

So, you know, people are getting upset because this is the second year in a row where we’ve started off on a bad start. And so, I just wanted to kind of review with everyone where we were at this point last year. So, going into this week, we had a loss against Atlanta United. We won our second game of the season against Houston Dynamo. We lost against Colorado Rapids. We lost against Chicago Fire. And then this upcoming week, we won against Real Salt Lake. 

So, we were off to a better start. This point last year, Chad, do you feel like there’s cause for concern at this point? Because it seems like people as a whole, where they, not this game in particular, but as a whole, people are frustrated. Is there a cause for concern? Do you think it’s going to get better? What are your feelings? I do think it’s going to get better. I do think there’s still some cause for concern. 

If you think about it, only one point worse than they were last year. But last year was a really bad season at this point too. So, if they were to beat the Sounders this weekend, suddenly they would still be only one point worse than where they were at the same exact point last time. And there’s actually players coming back versus last year, there was no help on the horizon, right? Now, people get tired of hearing about, oh, Polito when he comes back, and Kinda when he comes back, Polito seems like he could play. Now, people were making fun that he was like dancing on his Instagram, I guess, whenever they scored, when Daniel scored the goal. It feels like it’s not Polito’s choice to not be out there. It seems like it might be Peter’s choice. 

He talked about again in the pre-match press conference this week about being really cautious. He was talking specifically about Liebold and that answer. But I think it kind of transitions to everybody, right? We haven’t seen Russell, we haven’t seen Polito. Ken does probably pretty far off. 

He’s trying to be careful and is he being too careful? Maybe, but then the other argument would be everybody makes the playoffs. I know people hate when I keep saying this, but it’s kind of true. You would think, oh man, the season has started so bad. Nothing’s going right. Supporting must be just completely out of it. Nope, there’s still one point out of the last playoff spot. Exactly where they were a week ago. That’s interesting, I didn’t realize that. 

I think that this weekend against Seattle, Polito has to come on. If he can dance and he can practice, like he could come on for the last 10 or 15. Like I feel like the fans need to see him on the field, even if it’s for a little bit, to kind of reassure us. But I also am on the side of he hasn’t played for a year, so I wouldn’t expect him to come on and score a goal. I know you think it could happen based on his practice, but he hasn’t played for a year. So I think it’s also unrealistic to expect him or Russell. Russell more likely I could see it because he hasn’t been injured for an entire year, but or Kinda to come on and suddenly change the whole dynamics. But the other thing we were talking about is really the only thing that’s changed is Johnny Russell being out. Like that’s the only major change from last season to this season. 

I mean, there’s a few players who are gone, but they weren’t really big named stars. So we just need apparently Johnny Russell back on or we need to find a player and sign him who plays exactly like him to create those opportunities that aren’t currently being happening on the field. Yeah, I do think it’s a bigger issue that there is no one on this team that can replace Russell. And is this a tactical failure for me and his coaching staff in the sense that they seem to be playing the same way as though Russell were out there. Like they’re balancing everything to the left and leaving all that space on the right because what they like to do is hit that long switch to Russell and let him be out there in that space and take defenders on one on one, but you don’t have anybody out there that’s doing that. Maybe Marinos could do that. 

We’re just not getting a chance to see it because he’s not getting significant minutes. His shelter has been healthy. He’s started and like we said, Marinos is gone this weekend. So we won’t be starting this game. One other thing I wanted to mention from this Dallas game and maybe you if you have any closing thoughts too is I want to talk about the first goal. I saw some people online kind of blaming, oh, Zusi, he’s backing up and he’s giving Dallas space as they attack. And I think what he’s doing is he’s backing up so his other defenders can get into the game and kind of help. And then people also hating on Kyrie because they just want to hate on Kyrie. 

He’s tracking back defensively and he doesn’t get to Velasco. What it comes down to is that goal was a galazo and it was a great goal. And that’s going in almost always like you, you’re going to let people shoot from that distance through all that traffic, you know, more often than not. 

Could they have closed him down, maybe made it more difficult possibly? And that argument could be made on the second goal as well because Sweat gives the ball away and then he doesn’t close down the defender afterwards. He just tucks his arms behind his back and sticks his leg out. Ironically, the ball goes right above his leg. If he wouldn’t have lifted his leg in the air, he’d have probably blocked the cross and we wouldn’t have had a goal. But that second goal, a lot softer, but it goes back to Ben Sweat screwing up for me. Maybe a few guys are ball watching after the shot comes in and Jesus Ferreira takes the shot. Maybe Pools Camp should catch that ball and not allow a rebound or he should, if he’s going to block it, block it away further. So it doesn’t just fall so close. 

That second one’s a little softer, but on the whole, that first one’s really good. If anybody can make their freaking PKs, we’re not even talking about this, we’re not losing our minds. So that’s kind of my closing thoughts on Dallas. Do you have anything else you want to say on them or should we move on? Yeah, I think the last thing I just want to say is if you get two opportunities for PKs and you can’t score either of them, I mean, I granted it was the same time, but we have a scoring problem. Even if they’re doing great in practice, it’s not the actual game and I don’t know what’s going to change that. They just are lacking confidence right now or maybe they’re full of confidence, but it sure doesn’t appear that way on the field. They look confused at times, they look nervous. They’re still holding the ball a lot and not making quick passes. 

Indecisive, yep. Yeah, they’re very indecisive. So until that changes, like I don’t know when they’re going to start winning games and the schedule is only getting tougher. Like, you know, Seattle’s a good team. So I don’t know, you know, how they win, although maybe against our team, like maybe we’re throwing in the towel and saying they’re going to lose and they come in and win because that happens sometimes. It’s just an unexpected win. Yeah, maybe they raised their level. So that feels like a good transition point. Let’s take a quick break and we’ll be back with more for the glory KC. 

All right, we’re back and let’s talk about the Sporting Kansas City Seattle Sounders match up this weekend. So it’s a home game. Keep in mind, sporting have been on the road for three of their first four games which also makes it a little tough. That said, they didn’t win their other home game against the LA Galaxy when they probably should have. 

They’ll be hosting the Seattle Sounders this Saturday at 7.30 p.m. Most of the local games this year will be at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday night. 

So that’ll be easy to keep track of with some Wednesday games sprinkled in. Seattle will enter the game coming off a draw against LAFC. Seattle is now two one-in-one, two wins, one loss, one draw. On the season, they lost to FC Cincinnati. They drew, like we mentioned, to LAFC. They got a couple of solid wins against Colorado and RSL who are apparently bad teams. They’re not doing very well right now either. 

But I saw a lot of Sounders fans. Sheenah was actually reading Sounders at heart to me as we were driving home from Dallas and they were kind of consoling themselves saying, hey, we think the Seattle should have done better against LAFC. And that’s a really admirable way that Seattle played. And I think, I look at it the other way, LAFC played midweek. They played in the Champions League. They were depleted. They looked tired. 

And they still couldn’t pull out a win in their home stadium. Now, granted, LAFC might be the best team in the league. So there’s a little bit of forgiveness there. 

I think the argument going into the second week of the season or the third week of the season was, is it Seattle that’s the best team? Is it LAFC or is it Philadelphia? And weirdly, apparently it’s St. Louis. No, I’m just kidding. Obviously they’re not the best. They just have the best record. So it’ll be interesting. 

CCL takes it out of teams. LAFC may not turn out to be as good as they once were. But I’ll give you a little bit of information about what we know about Seattle right now. And then we can kind of just give some quick thoughts on this game because, again, we are fresh off of a road trip here. And we don’t have a lot for Seattle. 

So first off, they missed Heber. Their backup striker missed last game with a hamstring injury. Their starting striker just returned for a injury. Raul Ruidiaz, and he’s subbed off early. 

He’s not quite fit. Sporting fans should be aware of how that works, coming back from an injury. Same thing for Joao Paulo. He came back from injury, and he did not play the full 90 minutes. They lost their young center back, Jackson Reagan, to an injury. He was replaced by Xavier Ariaga. 

Or how are you pronouncing Arriaga in the car to me, Sheena, do you remember? Well, I don’t remember. But I had to go Arriaga to remember how to say it, right? Yeah, I said like a pirate, Sheena. Arriaga, and that helped her keep it straight. Because I don’t know if this bothers you all well. When somebody’s like reading something to me, and I know they’re saying the name wrong, I’m like, it just makes me crazy. I think I was saying Arreaga or something. 

Who knows? So Seattle not nearly as banged up. as sporting though because outside of Heber he was the only person on their injured report last week so still we can use that as an excuse? I don’t know. Anyway, what thoughts do you have about sporting returning home and facing these Seattle Sounders this Saturday? I’m excited they’re coming home. Hopefully being at home with their fans will give them some sort of confidence because I have to imagine another loss that they could have easily tied if not one has to be hurting them. 

I think a person you didn’t talk about was Jordan Morris. Hasn’t he scored a few goals so far this year? Yeah, I believe he has quite a few goals. I remember him scoring at least two in one game and Seattle were off to quite the quick start in terms of like the first two games. I think they scored like six goals or something like that. They’re still in third place overall right now in the West. They have yeah six goals for not only one against which caused them to lose so plus five. Man, wouldn’t it be nice to be plus five? Sporting only minus two despite how bad it’s going. They’ve only given up three goals all year even though they’ve only scored once. That’s surprising. 

The other thing I was gonna go over is the weather for this weekend. Oh yes, our weather report. So Saturday when the game starts it’s gonna be 54 degrees partly cloudy. There’s a 10% chance of rain from 7 to 8 and then it moves up to 20% if the game goes past nine. The wind is gonna be less than seven miles per hour. It’s gonna be between seven miles per hour and five miles per hour and then the humidity is gonna be at 54% which really doesn’t mean anything right now but that will start making a difference once the weather gets warmer. 

So it should be you know fairly good weather better than our last home game. Better than Dallas weather. Yeah that’s really good soccer weather. 

Yeah it was weirdly cold in Dallas. I don’t know what that was about and then as soon as we left my phone was like it’ll be 18 degrees warmer in Dallas today. I was like thanks a lot I’ll be out of Dallas in under an hour. 

Yeah on the way there I was like it’s 20 degrees colder than the day before we got there. So yeah weird weather. So the weather should be good so hopefully that will play in our favor. I don’t know Seattle’s used to that type of weather so I don’t know that it really gives us an advantage but hopefully it’s not too early in the season where people don’t start showing up to the games because hopefully there’s a lot of support this weekend. 

Yeah I’m hoping for that as well and I think a little bit of it is we’re reading the internet and those are the most engaged fans and they tend to be the most kind of hot takes sort of thing going on right versus when you look at like the average fan they’re gonna still be there. They’re still gonna be in attendance. I imagine this game will be a sell-out still despite the kind of rocky 0-1 or 0-2 and 2 start to start the season here. 

So although it’s there’s March Madness going on this weekend in Kansas City so that could impact it a little bit. Luckily KU and Mizzou were kind enough to get themselves eliminated so that we wouldn’t be distracted. No I know I’m gonna lose some people here but I am a Mizzou guy. I root for Mizzou and I was like hey they made it out of the first round what an accomplishment they look like they were a better team than that but Princeton man who knew they got U of A and Mizzou out of there and then yeah KU heartbreaker there against Arkansas but hey there’s still Kansas State I believe they’re still in the tournament. They’re the Shockers right? No that’s Wichita State. Oh Kansas State’s the Wildcats. Oh yeah I knew that. 

Big super college sports fan over here Sheena Smith. Alright so as far as the Seattle Sounders game though Sheena I want you to make a prediction. I think that if we look back at last year if you all will remember sporting played Seattle on the next the last game of the season and we were at that game and I made it like all the games but we were there as fans and sporting won that game. One nothing super traumatic it eliminated the sounders from the playoffs. These two have had a bit of a bitter back and forth over the last couple of years. 

Seattle leads the all-time series by two wins so I have no reason to make this prediction. I’m saying that sporting are going to win an Alan Pulido is going to sub in and get the game winning goal because you know what if he’d have taken that penalty kick it had gone in the net. If Remi would have taken that penalty kick it would have gone in the net. Yeah so who’s deciding who takes penalties it seemed like they were just arguing it out on the field and I don’t know what we got to ask Peter about that because it feels like maybe that should be pre-assigned like who’s banging them in in practice. Yeah, I don’t know that would be a good question. 

I assume Eric Thommy since he’s the captain does that give you like deciding factors like who gets to do what on the field, I don’t know I don’t know what the job of the captain is. I’m not sure what the protocol is either but you Russell usually takes the Pks whenever like all last year when Pulido was gone but Pulido seemed to take them before that so it’ll be interesting to see it’d be nice to have both those guys back and have options but it did feel like Remi Tommy and Agada were all kind of like arguing over who was going to take it and weirdly enough when Agada took it it’s kind of abnormal because usually the person that draws the foul doesn’t take the penalty you know Nate Bukaty has this point he always makes that he goes whoever draws the penalty should be the one to have to take it which I kind of like that like if there was like a rule that said hey you were the one taken down or you were the one that kicked the ball into somebody’s hand and you know you got a handball or whatever that you should have to take it I think that’d be kind of an interesting cool rule maybe they’ll roll that out in MLS next pro because they’re always trying weird new rules over there and I’d be down for that rule because it would take the choice out of it in terms of no you don’t get this decide you don’t get to put your best person up there whoever earned the penalty because penalties feel kind of cheap sometimes sadly sporting did not take advantage and it wasn’t cheap for them so I predicted a win though Sheena what are you thinking I’m not feeling as confident as you are I think Seattle is gonna come in they had a draw against LAFC and it feels like they could have won so I think they’re gonna look for redemption from that game from last year as eliminating them I don’t think we’re gonna see Polito although we should and I think even if he comes on he’s not gonna come on for long and I don’t think he’s gonna score although I hope I’m completely wrong on all this I think we’re gonna lose it’s gonna be two to one or that’s one to two because it’s a home yeah you would technically list the home team first in soccer it is okay so one to two yeah I hope I wrong I hope I’m wrong I don’t like making these like bad predictions but I don’t feel I don’t feel confident that they can go in there against Seattle and play up to their potential even if Polito comes in like there’s and unless like there’s significant changes to the lineup but if we’re basically getting the same lineup we’ve been getting all season like they’re not gonna beat Seattle I think we all know that I don’t know home games mean something in a MLS so we’ll see I hope that you were wrong I hope that I am right and yes I was more optimistic for the last home game to where I was like three nothing sporting over LA galaxy that didn’t work out either so what do I know I did say I was pessimistic about going on the road against Dallas who’s a good team so hey I got that right I mean I think we said they would either draw or lose against Dallas we did we were hoping for a draw but you got the worst of it didn’t work out any other thoughts on Seattle before we move on and talk about the Kansas City current let’s just talk about KC Current baby KC Baby yes the current are starting their 2023 in WSL regular season this Saturday also on Saturday this one’s on the road though it’s gonna be against the North Carolina courage at 1 p.m. so you should be able to watch the game on Paramount Plus and then hop in your car head over to Children’s Mercy Park and check out the second game where Sporting Kansas City will take on the sounders or if you’re not local or don’t want to go to the game you can always follow online and go to Apple TV that game by the way for Sporting and the sounders is not gonna be free it’s gonna be behind the paywall so you’re gonna have to have Apple MLS season pass to be able to watch but the current so this will be their first game of the season they are coming off a runners-up they lost in the NDSL finals last year against the Portland thorns and if you haven’t been following them in the offseason oh my goodness have the Kansas City current been making some moves they’ve brought in quite a few new players. 

We’ve got Swedish international Hanna Glas. I got to learn if I’m saying her name right. I’m probably not. 

Mimi Larsson as well, also a Swede. She’s a forward. She joined the club. 

But maybe the biggest move of all have come in free agency inside of the NWSL. This is the first year of NWSL free agency. The team added former U.S. women’s national team, Midfielder Morgan Gautrat . You may know her as Morgan Bryan before she’s married. 

They added Vanessa DiBernardo and then the biggest signing of all, who they poached from this weekend’s opponent, the North Carolina Courage, is Debinha, Brazilian superstar, second highest FIFA rated NWSL player, one of the best women’s players in the world, Midfielder Debinha. So lots of moves on the current side of things. But I want to catch you up on what’s going on with the North Carolina Courage. As I mentioned, they lost Debinha, but they had quite a bit of turnover this offseason on draft day. They traded their rookie of the year contender, Diana Ordonez, who scored something like 10 goals last year, traded her away. One of the players on the team, I don’t know if you saw this or if I told you about it, tweeted about like, what is the front office doing? They don’t know what they’re doing. Like one of their own players said this after they got rid of Ordonez. And I think if I’m remembering right, that was Abby Ercig. Apologies if I’m getting that wrong. 

But then later, Abby Ercig and Carson Pickett, you may know Carson Pickett, she’s got like, I don’t know what the terminology is, she’s like partial amputation on her left arm, I think, or maybe she was born with that defect, I’m not sure. So very good player, though, she’s gotten on the fringe of the US Women’s National Team. Her and Ercig were traded together for Emily Fox of racing Louisville, Louisville, where Fox came from, Fox is a US Women’s National Team, left back, starting left back at times, and she played starting right back as well. 

So big player there, but they gave up some talented players to get them and I have to wonder if the front office malfeasance was part of the problem. They’ve also added a couple international players. They added Japanese midfielder, Nerumi Nerua, I’m sure I’m butchering that sorry Nerumi, and then the Danish national team player, Mille Ghezil Jensen. Yeah, definitely screwed that one up. 

I want to give a shout out to a website y’all should go to and I’ll drop this link in the description of the show, richcountry.com. They had a good write up of all the different moves of the off season so you can get caught up and that’s how I got caught up and what’s going on with the North Carolina Courage. So opening day this weekend, Gina, what do you think? I’m excited to see KC Current in action and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen their opponent, the North Carolina Courage, because admittedly, I haven’t watched much of the KC Current games. I’m sitting there while you’re watching them, but I don’t always pay attention. 

Well, I will tell you, the Courage were a really good team. Last year was the first year she really paid attention to the NWSL because the current was in the league now and they had a brand and they were playing much better than that first year where they were really struggling, unfortunately. But the North Carolina Courage won multiple titles as the Courage and then another title as the Western New York Flash before they moved to North Carolina. 

So they were historically a very good team, but looking up and down their roster, I do not recognize a lot of these names because they’re players that have been backups. Like I saw Brittany Ratcliffe on there, she used to be on Kansas City and Katy Rowland, who’s like a backup keeper, used to be on Kansas City. But not a lot of big stars outside of their goalkeeper is pretty good. So maybe the current will make her goalkeeper of the week. That’s just what happens to Kansas City soccer teams. 

So who knows? But I’m pretty excited about the current personally. I think they should be basically one of the top contenders to win the whole thing based on the moves and the roster machinations from this offseason. I agree. 

And I think it’ll be interesting to see Debinha play her former team and see how that goes. Hopefully she’ll have a good game against her previous team. And we’ve added a lot of new players onto KC current, a lot of really good players like all offseason and preseason, you’ve been trying to determine their formation. So I feel like as a soccer nerd, you’re going to be excited to see what this formation actually looks like, like the speculation will be gone. And so I’m, I’m excited to watch the game. I did want to give you the weather for carry North Carolina where the game is going to be played. So Saturday, the weather, the temperature is going to be in the low seventies between 72 to 73 degrees. There is a 60% chance of rain at 12. And then it like decreases just slightly at one when the game kicks off. And then the wind is going to be about 15 miles per hour throughout the game. So it could be some potential weather during the game. So that’ll be interesting to see if that impacts either team while they’re playing. 

But I’m excited to see, you know, hopefully a win for a Kansas City soccer team. Hopefully the KC current can be that bright shining light that everyone gets excited about because I feel like right now nobody’s super excited about sporting. So hopefully this will restore faith in Kansas City soccer. Double win weekend. 

Let’s call it right now. I like that. I hope that happens. I hope so too. 

So a little bit more about the current election was saying, we don’t really know what formation they’re going to come out and play in. I wrote a whole article kind of speculating all the different ways they could try to fit these players together on the field. Looking across the roster, they still seem maybe a little bit deficient in the central part of their defense. So I’m interested to see if they keep that three center back set that they played a lot last year because they lost one of their starters in Kristen Edmonds. But they did make a couple more moves this week. They signed their last three rookies who were in camp with them. 

Gabby Robinson, Jordan Silkowitz and Ryland Childers. Schilder’s a midfielder. Silkowitz is probably going to be the third goalkeeper. And then Robinson could be competing for that center back job. 

She’s a central defender. Also, they kind of snuck into her release last week and a lot of us missed it. They released midfielder Chloe Logarzo, who had been spending the offseason playing over in Australia. I thought it was weird that she still hadn’t ported to camp. Like what’s going on here? Why isn’t she over here? Sheena will know Logarzo as the catcher from the big slick baseball game that we went to last year. She was out all last year with an injury and she got healthy like right at the end of the season, but they didn’t end up rotating her in, you know, because they’re heading into the playoffs and they had a good thing going. 

Really no reason to mess with that. All right. So as far as predictions though, I’m always hesitant. Road games are tough. It’s the first game of the season. I bet that they look like the better team, but it might be tough to get a win. I’m hoping that the current come out and win, like you said, but the good draw on the road is usually acceptable to start your season. Although gosh, they have a tough return home game next week. First home game for the current, they host the defending champions in a rematch, the Portland Thorns. So that’s going to be a tough one. Do you think Kansas City is going to go on the road and get it done? Sheena, we basically know nothing about them because there was no preseason game streamed. Any video we could watch was like a minute long and not a lot of info to take away from that. 

Well, I do feel confident in them more so than sporting. So I’m going to go for it all and say they’re going to win this. I think it’ll be, they’ll get two goals and North Carolina will get one goal. So they’ll win by a point and we will be at the game next weekend for KC Current. So I’m excited about that. 

Maybe I’ll live tweet both games on Saturday because I’m not going to go to the sporting game. Should I do that? You should. So everybody go follow at for the glory KC on Twitter and you can see Sheena live tweet the game or you can follow me at play for 90. I’m always tweeting. You’ll get more precise information from chat. 

I just tweet nonsense. Sometimes you have good observations. Don’t cut yourself short, but I definitely like the over-under on amount of tweets about hair probably goes up a little bit if you’re running the Twitter accounts. 

So one more topic we want to talk about before we get to the digital crawl and it’s a weird one. You might not have seen this, but it feels worth sharing. There was this little controversy that broke out this week. There is a podcast based out of St. Louis. It’s like the soccer capital podcast. I should probably get the name right. 

right, formerly soccer capitals, what they’re saying here. But they got a letter from Sporting Kansas City and they basically came out and said, hey, Sporting Kansas City threatened to sue us if we didn’t change our name and they changed their name to River City Ramble. And then they put these letters out, I’m gonna drop these into the show notes so that you all can check these out as well. But I wanna read what Sporting sent them and then we’ll kinda talk about it a little bit. But the email comes from the vice president and general counsel for Sporting Kansas City, the name is blacked out when the tweet was shared. And it says, good afternoon. 

I am the general counsel of Kansas City Training Partners, LLC and also the VP general counsel of Sporting KC. Do you have time to chat on about the federal registered trademark, soccer capital of America, that our legal department believes is being infringed by the name of your podcast. I have time available on Monday afternoon or Tuesday next week. If you prefer, I speak at your legal counsel. I’m happy to do so. Please provide contact information. He says, thanks. 

So a little digging and it looks like some people found out that they admitted maybe it was that they just never responded to Sporting Kansas City and they changed their name. And the whole controversy is basically because Sporting has the trademark on soccer capital of America. I am no lawyer, but friend of the podcast, Jimmy Mack, who’s a co-writer with me over at the Blue Testament, he shared this link about trademark law. And basically what the gist of it is, is that if you don’t defend your trademark, you can lose your trademark. So if you let people infringe upon your trademark and they use it, then you can later be like, have suits or petitioned to lose your trademark. So Sporting would no longer own soccer capital of America if they don’t defend it. So it seems like a completely reasonable thing to do. And I just wanted to like put this out there so people could talk about it. People are blaming Sporting. They’re saying, oh, they should worry about scoring goals and winning soccer games and not worry about defending trademarks. 

But I want to share something that ties back into this podcast. We have the name for the glory KC. And if y’all are Sporting Kansas City fans, you know that there is that chant from the cauldron, right? For the glory of the city, no other club but SKC. And because I wanted to use the slang for the glory into my podcast, I was like, I’m getting it from that song. That’s why it’s in my head. 

So I reached out to the cauldron and actually got like legal written permission to use it so that I wasn’t doing any sort of violation because they do have a trademark on that expression. So I feel like I kind of have a little bit of a take in that if you want to use something that someone else owns, the right thing to do would be to ask. And maybe if they give you permission to do it, it’d be okay because technically, St. 

Louis, I just assume because I’m sorry, I’m really starting to not like St. Louis fans basically, but what they did is they spelled it different. They spelled it soccer capital T-O-L instead of T-A-L as in like a building versus like a city or a place. Like, you know, this is the soccer capital of America versus this is the soccer capital building of America. So a lot of things I’ve thrown out there, Sheena, what were your thoughts about this? And then I have a little extra context that I’ll add in that I learned tonight. 

So I actually prefer the River City. Like their new podcast name, I think sounds better. It makes more sense because it’s along the, is it the Mississippi River? Yeah. Missouri and Mississippi. Missouri and Mississippi. 

Yeah, so to me that makes sense. And again, just like with anything in life, you can’t just use something that’s already trademark, rather like a lot of people get in trouble with this, with music or, you know, other brands. So they did do something wrong, even if they spelled it just one letter off, it’s the same thing essentially. So sporting, you know, legal team does, it’s totally legit that they contacted that podcast. 

And I understand the St. Louis fans. I wonder how many of them actually, was this, do you know, is this like the big St. 

Louis podcast for soccer? Or is it, is that equivalent to us, maybe a little more popular? Yeah, you know, honestly, I have no clue. I know it’s been around for a little bit, like they were doing it before, actually stumbled upon them. You all may remember, I mentioned this podcast randomly before, because I was trying to find, Sporting KC had a soccer capital podcast about the World Cup, like Nate Bukaty and a few of the guys were talking about the US men’s national team during the World Cup last fall. And I stumbled on this podcast when I was trying to find Nate’s podcast. 

And I thought that was kind of funny. I was like, oh, they’re stealing our name. Like who are these guys? They’re trying to build a rivalry. And I think actually it might have been Jimmy as well that said, if they don’t make a T-Fo, talking about this for the first time, Sporting, come visit their stadium, it’s a missed opportunity. 

It’s probably just a loud minority of St. Louis people on the internet. Just kind of like how the people that are losing their mind first from Sporting Kansas City fans, mostly just like a loud minority. A lot of people are just going along, going, hey, it’s four games into the season. We’re missing a bunch of players, that sort of thing. But what I found out tonight that kind of grossed me out was they have been going and finding anybody that works for Sporting KC that has a Twitter account and like personally attacking them. I saw one for Patrik Bergabo, who’s like one of the PR guys I work with, like in conjunction with the Blue Testament. 

And they’re going after him and saying, he should be disgusted based on and he should be ashamed and this and that. And it’s some of the same people that were tweeting at me trying to get me to cover this. So I was like, oh wow, you’re acting like a fool and an ignorant person on the internet and attacking people that literally have nothing to do with this. These PR people, it may be, maybe they discovered it, who knows, but like the likelihood is this is nothing to do with it. It’s just protecting their trademark and law. 

And it probably looks bad that I’m exciting with the team that I support and the team that I spend a lot of time covering. But I don’t know, I just try to be a rational, reasonable person. And it like makes sense if you violated a trademark, even if you didn’t mean to, it is what it is. And sometimes you gotta switch your name. 

I don’t know if you know, the guy Kevin Lopez, he has that YouTube channel where he, you know, I’ve showed you the videos before, where he watches the game and he like reacts to the game. He yells or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s the reason you made your debut on Apple TV. That’s true, yes. 

I accidentally made my Apple TV debut because I was talking to Kevin. But Kevin last year, he used to be called SKC Fan TV and he had to change his name probably basically for the same reason is what it sounds like because he put a tweet out saying like, hey, I’m not the guy to talk to you about this. Like I’ve already been through this. 

And, you know, they own those names. And I think actually for Kevin, it’s gonna be better for him in the long run because now he’s not, he’s building this brand that isn’t just tied to Sporting Kansas City. So he can stream current games. He was talking about streaming other MLS games and other games around the world. So I think like, actually it might help him. 

The same thing like River City Ramble, you own that now. That’s your own thing versus using someone else’s thing. Like we’re just doing this for fun. We’re having a good time. Like I don’t mind and I’m not like profiting off of it in any way. So it’s not, it’s not making anything out of it. Like it just looked a place for me to vent my feelings and thoughts about the team or we’re not bent. I tend to not vent as much. But anyways, that was kind of my thoughts on it. Did you have any other? Yeah, I think I wonder if part of the reason these St. Louis fans have more of an issue with it is because it’s on the other side of the state. And there is this like rivalry for some reason Kansas City versus St. Louis. 

So maybe if the soccer capital of America had been over in Colorado, for example, would it have been as much of a deal if they had gotten a letter from, let’s just say the rapids? Like I think because it was Kansas City, it just adds to the fuel. And I think that sporting is doing the right thing. And clearly these people don’t understand anything about trademarks because if they did any kind of research on trademarks, they probably didn’t even look to think to see if that name was already taken. Cause I’m sure if you did a quick Google search, you would see sporting has the trademark. So it seems like a lack of research when they were coming up with their podcast name. Yeah, I don’t know about y’all, but I always find it funny when like bands or somebody exists, then they name themselves something so generic that you can’t Google it. Like you got to think about if you Google this, what’s going to come up? You know, what’s going to be the first thing that pops up in results. And hopefully, you know, it’s something that’s unique enough that when they Google it, it’s going to come to you. So maybe in the long run, it’ll be better for them. But I think so. Okay, cheers. 

I think River City Rambler, is it Ramblers or Rambles? Ramble, yeah, they like talking your rambling. Yeah, I think that’s a really good name actually. I think it’s way more creative than the soccer capital or whatever they were trying to call themselves. So they did themselves, like Sporting did them a favor, honestly. 

Sheena, you’re gonna get this, like, the most controversial thing. They’re gonna come at you now probably. So luckily we don’t share your Twitter. They’ll just come after our soccer podcast Twitter. 

Well, I mean, it’s all good. I mean, I’m saying this as like, it’s a better name. Like, they did do you a favor, rather you agree with that or not, but you’re right. Like, they’re able to create themselves a brand and they can go into other sports if they want to because you can ramble about the Cardinals and the Blues as their hockey team. Yeah. Yes, ma’am. 

So there’s other things you can ramble on or you could get other people to ramble if you don’t care about those sports. So yeah, don’t be mad at me. You know, I wanna add one more thing to kind of build this lore as this rivalry, you know, starts to take off. Cause they wanted to call it the derby queue, like as in barbecue, but I still, we talked about that and made, we made fun of that earlier in this podcast history. That’s silly. Because St. Louis has even. 

I don’t even remember that. Yeah. St. Louis is even known for barbecue. It’s a non-sense like. Well, they’re known for their ribs. Yeah, but that’s not even get into this again. It’s a dumb name. 

Are you sure we had the, I don’t remember this conversation. Are you sure it was with me? Some listener go back and find it and pull it out and tell which episode it is. She, she only listened to it like three times live when she was editing when it was posted. 

But one thing I wanna add to this lore is, you know, sporting Kansas city is an MLS original, right? The Kansas city whiz at the time they came in in 1996. And I saw this story that was talking about how MLS really wanted to put a team in St. Louis in 1996. 

Because St. Louis, as much as, you know, people are curtain to hate them and we’re starting to pick on them, right? Cause they’re gonna be sporting rival and it’s, it feels like it’s gonna be a real rivalry on like some of these other ones. Proximity helps that St. Louis has this great soccer history. So they wanted to put a team there like, hey, they had the World Cup team back in the day, like in, I think it was the 1950s where five of the starters came from St. 

Louis. So the St. Louis area, like that’s kind of wild. That’s kind of crazy, but they couldn’t get their act together and get a team in St. Louis. 

There was no ownership group that would step up. So they ended up sticking a team in Kansas city and said to kind of have that Midwest region covered a little bit. So we got a team sporting Kansas city or the whiz at the time and then later the wizards because St. Louis couldn’t get their act together. So it took them, what is this? The 28th, 29th MLS season, they’re finally showing up and man, they’re doing it in four, side of, dang it, four games undefeated, but it doesn’t last forever, St. Louis fans. We’ll see how it plays out for y’all as the season goes on. 

Any final thoughts before we go to the digital crawl, Sheena? Let’s go to the digital crawl, Chad. I was supposed to say, let’s go to the digital crawl, y’all. Let’s go to the digital crawl, y’all. It’s like 1130 at night, sorry. That’s fair. 

This is a weird, if we’re a delirious and we’ve gone a little long, but hey, we didn’t do our early week podcast because we were in Dallas. All right, first item in the digital crawl, Daniel Sperry from the Kansas City Star tweeted out Tuesday and today they were recording that Alan Pulido, Johnny Russell and Daniel Shaller were quote, on a line together in practice. So I’m taking that to mean they were doing some sort of drill where they were playing as the three forwards in the 4-3-3 setup. 

That’s got me kind of excited. Russell being back in practice is nice because he was just jogging a week and a half ago when we saw him when I saw him. So is that got you a little excited, Sheena, before we blow through the rest of these stories? It does have me a little excited, but I would be curious to see how much longer it is before they’re actually all three in a game together. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be anytime soon based off of Peter Vermeer’s going real slow with Pulido, even though he’s dancing and whatnot. All right, yeah, fair enough, he’s being cautious. So the next item actually is the Sheena item for the crawl. 

So Chad, I don’t know if you’re aware of this. I’ve kind of taken over our Instagram account just a little bit and I have been posing questions to the people who follow us on Instagram. I believe it’s at for the glory KC, right? That is correct and you did tell me that you’ve been sending these messages, which is great. 

Build that engagement, I’m bad at the social media nonsense. Yeah, so I just said, probably should have covered this earlier, but I every, well, I shouldn’t say every week. I’ve done it two weeks in a row now, so this is every week I’m gonna try to do this. 

Just a place where people can vent and or pray sporting depending on how they’re feeling. So I just wanted to go over kind of how people who follow us on Instagram are feeling. Overall, people are disappointed and a little worried about the future. 

People are saying, Polito needs to come back, which I think we all agree with. And Ben Sweat is giving, you know, dire performance. People are overall pretty high on John Pulskamp, which I’m happy about. Overall, people are nervous though and wondering like at what cost is all this, like all these injuries and stuff gonna affect us? I’m nervous too, y’all. I’m trying to be rational and calm, but it’s tough, four games, no wins, one goal. 

I said it last week on the podcast. I think it really this week is a must win situation. And last week I was feeling kind of confident about it. Not sure about this week, but you know, if you need a place to vent, come Monday or Tuesday onto the Instagram account for the Glory KC, you can vent it out. 

Maybe sometimes I’ll read it, but you know, sometimes it feels good to know that we’re not alone in how we’re feeling one way or another. You’re not alone, everybody. Somebody’s out there for you. Yeah, we’re here for you. 

All right, well, last item in the digital crawl is the news that the MLS All Stars this year. They’ve been playing League of MX All Stars, but because of the League’s Cup, they’re gonna play all the Liga MX teams. So instead, if they’re back to a prior format, where they play a big European club, and this year it’s gonna be Arsenal, who may be the Premier League champions by the time they show up and play in the summer. So it’ll be close. We’ll see it might come down to the very end. 

I’m not gonna lie, I don’t follow the appeal very closely, but I saw Arsenal was doing quite well. Way to go, Arsenal. I don’t care which of your teams win in the Premier League. So sorry, but I’m glad it’s somebody different than just, you know, Man City or Liverpool every year, as it’s been the last few seasons. 

So Arsenal this summer, all-star game, there you go. Where does the MLS All Star game play? Is it in the United States? It is in the United States. Do we know where in the United States? This year it’s gonna be in DC. Oh, okay, and that’s in the summer. Yeah, the All-Star game’s gonna be on July 19th at Outty Field in Washington, DC. Oh, we’ve been to that field. We have. Ironically, not for a DC United or Sporting Kansas City game, but a US Men’s National Team game. 

Just happened to be there while we had a vacation plan to that side of the country. And I was like, yeah, we’re gonna go to that. I liked that field. You know, honestly, it was kind of bare bones, but it was fine. It was good. 

I’m just glad that there’s soccer-specific stadiums all around the country. It was very simple inside. I heard it was done a little bit on the cheap, which DC United is known for being cheap. So that kind of makes sense. That makes sense. All right, well, we did what we try not to do, and we took too long to get through the crawl. But if you made it this far and you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and tell all your Kansas City soccer friends that they need to listen, because hopefully you’ll learn something new listening to this little nuggets here or there, and you get to hear this weird husband and wife format thing that we have going on. I think it’s kind of fun. 

Just search for the Glory KC wherever you get your podcast. If you enjoyed the show, and only if you enjoyed it, be sure to go give us that five star rating and review. If you didn’t like it, instead you’re gonna wanna reach out to me on Twitter at playfor90. I can take your feedback or to us at Fort with the Glory KC on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or you can even email us. And we may read your email on the air fortheglorykc at gmail.com. To play us out here is Kristian Leo with “Ride It Like You Mean It.” 

Take care, everybody.