Inside The Cooligans' MLS Broadcast Deal & NYCFC's Queens Evolution

Hello everybody and welcome to the Total Soccer Show. My name is Taylor Rockwell and I'm excited to be here wearing a total soccer show shirt while also wearing the classic edition of a total soccer show. Shirt is Mr. Christian Polanco of the Coolagans Christian. Thank you for wearing the shirt that you wear every time I see you. Of course. Exactly. This is the only this is my uniform whenever I speak to we got to brunch. I'm like he's going to wear that he's going to wear the TSS shirt. Obviously doesn't wash it. So I might need I might need a new one. But thank you so much for having me brother. Yeah, man, it's good to see you. It's good to talk to you. It's good to see you in that lovely, lovely blue shirt. It is a requirement that I have that all of my friends wear a total soccer show apparel at all times. So thank you for. At least I know that you've toned it down because your friends had to get the Taylor Rockwell face that too. That was a requirement for a little bit, but I'm glad you came to your senses. I still can't leave you chose to get that tattooed where you did. I'll leave that mystery. Exactly. You know, at the next TSS live show, just ask me. It's never before your engagement for Christian that he shows up to a live event to introduce us to do some stand up. How was that for you in LA doing the introduction? Because like you're very busy. You got a lot going on in the soccer world. I don't know how much stand up you are you are doing anymore, but you did some you did some solid work, my friend. Yeah. Thank you. No, I love it anytime. I get it's hard. It's getting harder to do stand up because I've been so busy doing soccer related things. Anytime I get the chance to do it and then to be at a TSS live show is always fun at a great time. And then recently I've been getting a seeing a few comments on some of our YouTube videos on Instagram and people saying like, oh, I saw, you know, I saw Christian for the first time at the TSS live show and or my I went to live show with my wife and she had never seen them before and she thought he was really funny. And then that's it. That makes it all worth it. Even though, yeah, even if I'm busy or whatever stuff like that is, it's great. You know, we don't get to do enough soccer related stand up and people don't get it's to see it enough. So I'm honored to do it. That is interesting because I do forget like even in my introduction, I didn't say really who you were, what you do, I just assumed people know, but we've known you for that long, right? We knew you prior to the World Cup comedy tour, but then we did the comedy tour together. You in Alexis and like, imagine who did the organizing and then myself and Arleiko Stereo Grove, who I know you loved and we're quite close to. But you know, we've known each other for a good long while at this point. We've seen the ups and downs and it feels like you all are very much on the up, my friend. We'll talk a little bit about your new deal, but first I want to ask you about your summer. Obviously, you did the live show. I'm going to assume that was not the highlight of your summer though. No, I mean, it was still a, it was a highlight in that we did the podcast with it. You know, 30 some odd episodes of the show live, but we were also doing a watch part, a World Cup watch party tour with Bank of America and Visa. So what would happen is we would go live pretty much after matches. So we would be on stage, good night everybody. You know, here's deathcap for cutie and we were with with band. So we would effectively, we watched the game and then the band would play afterwards. Or some quarter, you know, a performer, a deathcap for cutie and then we would run backstage to do the live show for our audience and our supporters and stuff like that. So it was not a logistical nightmare, but it was a logistical challenge of like making sure our flights arrived before we had to do the live show and our flights left after we had to do the live show. And then combined with being in 11 different cities in the US for this tour, it was called the breakaway tour. It was unbelievable. Again, that deathcap for cutie, Shabuzy, ludicrous, Jack Harlow. And it's just like, I had an amazing, a wild interaction with Jack Harlow. I didn't realize how tall Jack Harlow was and Jack Harlow is also a part owner of Louisville City and racing Louisville from Louisville. So, but I'm standing next to him and Alexis and I were both like, dude, you're tall. Like he's like six, two, six, three. He's a pretty tall guy. Like, I just, you know, rappers aren't that tall normally, right? And I'm Alexis is like, damn, I didn't realize how tall you were and I go, I go, damn, Jack, were you a center back? And he goes precisely, that's exactly what I was. I'm like, man, what a cool choice of words for a center back. You'd be around all those celebrities and performers that it raised Alexis Diva quotient just a little better. He stayed just as grown as it is ever. I mean, I mean, he was looking down on those artists. I think they weren't. I mean, I actually believe that he wasn't. He's like, they should respect me a little bit more to be honest. He's trying to add lyrics. Get a writing credit in there. Right. What was your favorite city of the 11 for whatever reason? My favorite had to be Atlanta. I think for Atlanta's, New York also, the finals, like, I enjoyed them for different reasons versus like some of the games themselves were better than others. You know, I would say like the US game against Australia in Seattle and we were like a block away from the, from the field with that, you know, and then walking out and everybody's celebrating the game, those moments were incredible, but the show in Atlanta was, what was the game? It was the semi-final. It was England, England, France, England, no, not England, Argentina, England, Argentina. And so the game was insane. So that was, it was entertaining. And then after that ludicrous performance in Atlanta, like, my wife flew down to Atlanta to just experience. It was just so, I, then meeting ludicrous and talking to him and he was super nice and, and yeah, that collectively game and performance that had to be, had to be the best one by far. How does he introduce himself? Luda. He says Luda. Is it Luda? Like, are you calling him Luda? I don't know if I can bring myself to you. I think Mr. Bridges? I don't know. It's, it's interesting because, I mean, I guess people of our age, we grew up with ludicrous in his, his music career, precisely, precisely, right? But then there were a lot of people that grew up with him as an actor, like the, the Fast and Furious guy. And so it's, even some of the people didn't know like all the songs. It was like, trippy to like, people to not have the same connection to ludicrous that I did. But that just shows his like, longevity of his, of his own career, but he was super chill. And we did like, you know, they did like meet ingredients for every performer. And we met like the band Phoenix and they were, they were very nice that, do you know the band Phoenix? They have a, they have a song in like, AFC, so a lot of, a lot of performers have songs in AFC and stuff like that. But they were very, very French, but you had to like earn their, not that they were mean in any way, but they, you just had to like that. It was sorting you out before they really like warmed up to you, but ludicrous was just like, hey, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, it's just like much warmer for the level of celebrity that he is in my mind. He was much warmer than I, I could have been possibly expected, but yeah, so Atlanta was great. By far. Right. Southern hospitality. Not just to track for him. Exactly. And now you've got, you've got more news, my friend. You are in the news all over the place because you are doing some commentating. Or did you all, now, did you steal this directly from the mannings? Do they get royalties? Have you, have you talked to them about this or you're going to blaze at yourself? It is a long legal battle that I have enough money to fight against the mannings. No, but we're going to be doing a, I guess we could call it like a cool against cast for, for Major League Soccer for two matches for Campionist Cup and then Inter Miami, which is, Campionist Cup is going to be Inter Miami against Cruz Azul and then Inter Miami against FC Cincinnati on October 28th. So it's like September 16th and October 28th. And we're doing this with Yahoo Sports. We're going to be showing the actual game as we are watching it and people are going to be in the comments. You can comment. We're going to bring up people's live comments area as well, react to stuff. So like basically just watch two, one MLS match and one Campionist Cup match along with our fans and this is kind of the thing has just never happened. Apple I believe has never done this or at least Apple TV and MLS they've never done this. And the fact that we get to be the first ones to do it is pretty insane. So you know, risky move on Apple and MLS was part, I would say to make sure we get it all, all the admin done. How can people find it for those games? So Wednesday, September 16th, that's the Campionist Cup. And it's October 28th, isn't it Miami versus FC Cincinnati? Yeah, you can watch it. It'll be like on Yahoo.com and stuff like that. But you can just watch it on our YouTube channel. So YouTube.com slash soccer coolians just join us there. That's especially where all the, it'll be airing across all of Yahoo Sports's platforms. So as soon as you go to Yahoo Sports's Twitter, you'll see it playing right there. But if you want to comment and for us to see it, you go to our YouTube. So YouTube.com slash soccer coolians, the game, the 16th I believe is that I think we started around 8 p.m. and I think kickoff is around 830. But it's going to be really cool. So I'm just like really stoked that, you know, MLS put out a press release and I'm like, wow, I'm in the news for something good. This is kind of nice. Have you been in the news for something bad before? Have you done a grand ruffian and almost gotten kicked out of an Eastern European country? No, I didn't. Which country did he almost get kicked out of? Bosnia, I think he disparaged some of their infrastructure and they didn't take kindly to that. Yeah, can't wait. I mean, there's a, we call, we were talking about when they played Bosnia, Herzegovina, we were talking like, there's a, there's a, I forgot about word we used, but there's just like a, we called them hard whites. You know what I mean? Yeah. Bosnia, there's a different, they carry themselves a little bit differently. You can't really, you can't really do that out there. No, it's not the type of commentator that's going to be making it into the Cooler Gains production. Yes. Well, we will see if we, we get the second one because we know, we know it's already, you know, they can't, they can't pull the plug. I think while we're live on the first one, but they can probably say, hey, you know what? This, I don't know about the second one. Alexis, Alexis makes it appear to, like, I don't know about that guy. I don't like to look at this at all. They can't take it back because they, and the press release and everything, it says, stand up comedians, Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerrero's of the cool, they know, they know what they're getting themselves into. And I would say this, I think now, you know, with the new commissioner coming in and, you know, Don Garber's leaving, there's like a little bit of a, who's really running the show? A little super senior, like, hey, you know what? So I think this is the right time to get away with a little bit of a little bit of craziness. All right. All right. And then soon you all be running things. I'm excited for it. So you've done, like, live watch longs before, watch longs before, I think I've done one with you. In fact, is your approach going to be different for these are more or less the same? I'm thinking, I look, it'll be on brand cool again. So I don't think it'll be wildly different, but I, I will say my, my excitement is for two things. Yes, we can probably make, you know, the jokes that you make while you're actually watching a game that nobody is going to hear, that's we can do that. Right? And, and I think the, the safety net for MLS and Apple is that this isn't airing right on Apple TV. Like, you know, we are an alternative cast, so people have to go find us and it'll be mostly like our audience. It's not going to be, nobody's going to stumble on it on Apple TV itself, which is the next dream, right? That's what, that's what we're trying to get to someday. But I think it'll, there's also a couple cool things that are that we have access to. So we have access to the game and we're going to be seeing the, you know, this kind of, I'm going to sort of learn this as well with the audience, but there's like a, an exclusive iPhone camera angle that Apple is going to be using for this broad, for both broadcasts that we have access to. But then we also have access to the replays, like we can play them ourselves, like which is kind of cool to have that kind of control. But then we have access to the ref cam. We can pull up the ref cam whenever we want, which is, I mean, you got to be careful with the power you give us. So that, that is what I'm excited about. The fact that we sort of have control of the broadcast and what it looks like and what the audiences and they can see, you know, they can tell us, hey, go, go back to the ref cam. I want to see that or go back to that replay. So the audience will have some level of influence on what the actual broadcast is that what is displayed. So that's probably the biggest difference from any other kind of watch along that we do. Who do you anticipate having control of the replay camera? You were Alexis. I mean, it'll be the Yahoo staff that going to be handling everything, but yes, we will be kind of screaming into their ears to pull stuff up when necessary. I think y'all need the in-ear connection to the ref. That's really what's holding you back at this point. You get the ref cam and then you can also chat with the ref during the game. It's interesting, right? Because I believe the commentators do have that, right? They hear the conversations between the Santa ref and VAR because they always say like, oh, that's clear. That's being reviewed or whatever. So I believe they get access to that too. And if we don't have access to that similar to like Taylor Twauman and Jake Ziven, I mean, the level of disrespect, how could you do this to us Apple TV? Do you have, are you having guests or anything? Or at least the first one is just kidding me too? We were sorting that out now, but I believe so and I would encourage us to do that as much as possible. But I don't know yet. You could encourage yourself to have a guest. I would encourage Yahoo as well. So like, yeah, get the manning's in here, right? They own, and there will be a cell teams, but they're not sure they have some influence and then or knowledge of the game. Why not? Like a little cool against crossover manning's cast or whatever. Why can't Taylor Rockwell call in? You know what I mean? I'm just saying. I'm busy that day. I don't even know what date is, but I'm busy, but oh, that one, yeah, and that one too, yeah. I know. But I instead look forward to just watching you all, because I think it'll be great. Obviously, you're about very good at what you do. I think you will bring certainly a different perspective, but some different energy and some fun energy and I think some opinion and analysis as well. So it should be a very good time. Do you get nervous for these types of things anymore? What does make you nervous at this point? You've done stand up. You've done like the live events. You've done the watchalongs. I feel like at this point, you're just an old pro. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I remember the first time I did stand up comedy, and I've told you this story a bunch of times, like I remember my knees rattling, like literally rattling where I had to lock them in place so that I wouldn't bounce off the stage. And I never thought I would get to a point now, or the point I am now where it's like the nervousness, the excitement is there, but the nervousness of like, oh, it's, I'm not going to, it's going to go badly. Like that's not even crossing my mind. Like, I mean, I'm confident in the work that I do and why I do it, right? Like I'm trying to bring some levity to the American soccer space and I don't pretend to be anything else. And there's just a, like, even if this is a perfect example, we were in Philadelphia doing the breakaway tour, and this was the, this was a game who was playing France and somebody I forgot, I forgot what game, I think it was a quarter final game. So the, the tour was sponsored by Bank of America and Visa and every single city, they're like, yo, shout out, we have to shout out, Bank of America Visa, Bank of America Visa, and you know, it's like corporate event or whatever. So we're doing that. And we're, we're doing, I think the show's going well, we're about to like bring up Jack Carlo and Alexis goes, yo, shout out to Visa and Mastercard for sponsoring this tour. And that's the worst they could go, right? You can't say that because that's clearly a competitor of the, of Visa. And I, and as I'm on stage, I'm like, Alexis, it's Bank of America, not a Mastercard. So, and then he, and he, and we support each other in this, right? He goes, he goes, oh, that's right, that's right, you know, it's a, it's a Bank of America Visa. Everybody, everybody in the crowd, let's boo Mastercard, boo, and everybody starts booing Mastercard. So we have fun, even in our mistakes and even in some of the errors. So that's kind of how I see things like this or, you know, I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, but there's no reason why we can't have fun with our imperfections and stuff like that. So no, the nervousness doesn't really happen anymore because I'm, you know, again, I've been doing this long enough, but I'm also confident. And I know that the, well, I know what my purpose is when it comes to this stuff. So I, I feel pretty good about it. I was visa with that. There's one thing I know about giant corporate sponsors, they love when you make mistakes like that. They, they, they, the only thing they said were like, okay, good save. You saved it. It was. So they acknowledged an error was made, but it wasn't the biggest deal in, in the world for sure. I can't wait for Alexis to be like, welcome to USL presented by Hulu or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what I'm here for to clean up his messes. So with, I mean, first of all, accurate, like 100%, second of all, with the, the live show and the live stream live watch along, whatever you'd like to call it, like how different do you think it will be in terms of like, are there going to be silences? Are you okay with there being a little bit of dead air while you two are watching? Because that is like the tricky part with watchalongs, right? As you're watching, but you're also talking, you have to kind of pay attention. You don't want to do the thing where you're just like straight up talking over a goal because you're, you're doing your own thing, but you also don't want to kind of be too formulaic. So what's your general approach? Yeah. I think the, my, my focus is not to be a, to pretend to be a, another announcer, right? Like, I, I don't think people want to tune in. I'm just here, you know, messy to, to Richard the Paul, to Kazimiro and back. That's not what we're doing at all. I, look, they don't, they don't bring two comedians on board to do this so that we're formulaic and remind people of the, the traditions of, of American soccer. I think it's, look, and this is why I give credit to Yahoo, to, to Apple, to Emily, the last four, you know, we used to have to sneak into MLS events and MLS parties and the fact that, and the fact that this is something that we get to do now is, it's huge. So my approach is just to like, I'm like, jokes, jokes per minute, how many jokes can I get in? How much, how much is the audience laughing as they're watching this game? Like, you know, the, the, the, when we started the cool against, and they, and people heard all comedians talking about soccer. I remember other journalists and people being like, what, you guys making fun of like MLS and making fun of Americans, like, I'm like, no, no, no, we're laughing with you. We like this sport. We need, we need people to be, have inside jokes that we can all kind of have fun with. So that is the, that's going to be the whole point, like, just a, a reminder that you can laugh about the game and that, that, and, and this is why I think it's like, why, sort of what we do is like, unique, I, I only think we could only exist in the American soccer space because if we were like in England, we would have to be much more tribal and much more like, you Chelsea, you Arsenal, whatever, and like, it's harder to, it's not impossible to make jokes, but there's a, there's a passion and people can easily get offended when you make jokes about their club. And it's like, well, you can make fun of us, you can make fun of NYCFC, you can make fun of whatever, but we can, we can laugh at, at fun, healthy banter. And that's why, like, I'm excited to sort of bring that to a larger audience with, with, with doing this. And how could I ever make fun of an Everton supporter? This joke would be easier, but that's why, that's why we have moments like, Aisley Maitin, Maitlin Niles, destroying the hearts of Manchester United. Look, I feel, what, I feel bad for the United strand is dude is never cutting his hair, ever. That guy, that poor man, that poor man is, yeah, he's gonna have a big head of hair for a good long while. It does seem that it's going to be the case. I'm just, I'm glad we can be a part of the, that continued luscious hair growth, but man, what a, Everton, with the nightmare of a transfer window with the Baligan situation and, and then they put it up performance like that with only one, they sold their striker because they were like, Baligan's coming in. It's all, he, we've agreed, it's all said, we only have one striker and one left back. It's ridiculous. Doesn't hurt you. Here you are. Here you are. Here you are. Here you've been and you've obviously been an NYCFC supporter, have you been an employee of them as well? Technically? No, no, never an employee. Well, we, we've been hired to, you know, sometimes I host there like Q&As with the players and we've done a bunch of stuff with, with the club, which is also incredible. So, but yeah, with Joe on today's show, we're recording this interview on Tuesday, but we recorded them on the show. I think he referred to the, Eddie Park as the most important construction project in American soccer. I can't remember if he said American soccer history, I don't, but maybe not wrong. I don't think that's an exaggeration at all. I'm so looking forward to not only the stadium being completed, my brick with my name on it. All right. I am a founding, me and Alexis are founding members of New York City FC. So the promise that was made when you became a founding members that when the new stadium was built, they would give you a, they would have a brick wall with all the founding members names in it. So my name will be forever in that stadium for as long as it is there, but I'm, but look, it's going to be next to obviously city field, next to Arthur Ashe Stadium and with the US open, it's currently happening. The matches that are going to be played there, you already, I, you know, and I've spoken to Brad Sims, the CEO of NYCFC and they're already like, okay, who can we get? Who are we? International teams can we get like Columbia? If you've ever been to Queens, they are so many Colombians and Columbia playing a match there would be sold out immediately and, and they also highlight like, this is a thing with Rebel Arena, you know, everybody complains like with Rebel, they can never sell out, they can never sell unless Messi's playing, they can never sell out. But if you ever, I've gone to gold cup matches at sports illustrator stadium now, formerly Rebel Arena, Hondurans, Guatemala, like they will go to red, they don't care where the stadium is, they're like, I want to go see my country play, and so that's why it's so disappointing that like Rebel hasn't been able to really connect with a really, really large audience in the area. So, but that's what I'm thinking, Etihad Park is going to just be insane. I mean, NYCFC, I will start to expect, you know, sell out crowds pretty regularly. They kind of, Yankee Stadium looks kind of empty, but they get like 23,000, 22,000, it's a pretty healthy like turn out. So now it'll just be in the smaller stadium, more intimidating for visiting teams and, yeah, and it's just going to be in a, I think a premier kind of event space for, not just soccer, but a lot of things going on in the stadium, the fact that the firegirls will have like a proper legit soccer stadium, I think it's going to change the dynamic of this sport, and they're going to have the Olympics as well. They're going to have you all doing like half time punditry, half time stand up, I would enjoy that. I mean, Shane Gillis is doing stadiums, why can't you? That is a great question, I would love the opportunity, I mean, we've gotten to do a lot of really cool things with NYCFC, you know, we did a stadium site visit with our hard hats and everything, yeah, yeah, we did that couple of months ago, and that was really cool. We stood on the like center of the pitch, but it was just, you know, not even dirt really, like whatever concrete or whatever that's on the ground, and just got getting to experience that, because again, NYCFC is the reason the cool against podcasts exist, the cool against what would not exist if NYCFC wasn't announced in like 2013 or whatever, and you know, it began this kind of, I don't know, motion of just like, oh, let's do, let's film some stuff outside of the matches, let's do a soccer podcast, and the beginning of the podcast was like, us really just talking about our experiences at NYCFC games to, you know, they're hanging out ludicrous now. So that's, that was the foundation. I was, I was the stadium tour, stadium tours are not always my favorite thing. I feel like it's a lot of like, feigning enthusiasm for like, yeah, that is a locker room. It was just a bunch of, a bunch of brick like cement blocks, we're just like, okay, yeah, all right. I have to, I have to use, put my imagination cap on, but it was, I think there's the, emotional aspect given that I'm so, I think indebted to NYCFC for like legitimately changing my life. I say we're like, no exaggeration at all. And so that part of it, especially with the frustration of the years and years and years of like, when is the stadium coming after like, after like two or three years, I thought it was going to be read by like two or three years, but like maybe 2018, 2019, and it just wasn't even remotely close and, and then where, you know, I used to watch the local board, it's like city council meetings, live stream that I'm like, who am I? What is this? I've never been this person, but I just care so much about like, it's not even just like the club doing well, but like the, you know, the friends you make along the way, but it is cheesy, but there's so many, I think the, even walking through that, like barely finished stadium, but like the memories of year one, year two, and, and celebrating big moments and, and, and struggling with the other supporters over very 11 game, winless streaks and stuff like that. But now I go to games and I'm in the supporter section, and I see kids that were, I remember kids when they were in that supporter section, they were like nine, 10 years old, and now they're 20 years old leading the chance in the, in banging the drums and they, I'm like, this is, this is, they grew up with this, and I grew up with this much later in life, getting to kind of experience that and see that, and you know, with a lot of endless clubs, it'll be like, your club has no history, and your club is four years old, or you're just a franchise and blah, blah, blah. But that's not how supporters experience it, and, and so that, walking through that stadium, it just makes me look forward to what is going to be like that first game in the supporter section, having that stadium, no more baseball jokes by the visiting team. Also, every team, if anybody at any admins are listening from any other Amalas team, stop making jokes about going to play in Yankee Stadium and say like, we're going to hit a grand slam or basically, you make every baseball joke you make, you end up losing, and you look terrible. Orlando did this, everything, Orlando did that thing last. Stop doing it. You're going to lose, it's a bad look, but overall, yeah, man, it's an emotional time getting to, I can't wait for around this time next year that we're in that stadium watching games. And before that, we've got the two watch lungs with you all one more time if people want to watch you and Alexis do commentary and perspective through two marquee Amalas matchups if you would tell us how. That's right. September 16th and October 28th, YouTube dot com slash soccer cool again and across all of Yahoo Sports social channels. So join us. Yeah. First one, September 16th, Campionist Cup, you know, Inter Miami against Cruz Asul. And we're going to, it's going to be the best. This is super, super cool. I mean, this, this smile on my face is very genuine. I'm really looking forward to doing something like this. I look forward to watching my friend and congratulations. That's a huge deal. That's so awesome. I look forward to you all being on Apple TV someday with your own show or with Emma less things. Which everyone you want. Who knows? Yeah. I mean, we said we got our podcasts. It's on two days a week. That isn't going anywhere. But getting kind of cool opportunities like this to show, give a little different light to Emma less. And American soccer is a privilege. And so I don't take it like this. But thank you so much. We wouldn't be here without the support of total soccer show. We all know that. I'm not sure that's true, but I appreciate the kind words slash lie anyway. For now, Christopher Blocko, thank you again. Congratulations again, my friend. It's great to talk to you. Cheers, brother. I love you very much. Thank you. And Alexis, you're fine as well. I'm sure you're listening to this. Be sure to tune in. Check out both those podcasts. Assuming the second one happens soon, Alexis doesn't get the same thing to get things canceled. We look forward to both of those. Thank you all so much for listening. And supporting coach of our program, it's time to give it a big thumbs up.