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Welcome to the Total Soccer Show and our latest brain to the Listener Questions Mailbag! On this episode, we're asking why Bezos wants a piece of Liverpool, which keepers would make the best outfield players, and we're seeing which staff managers bring with them when they make the old move, and so much more coming on this episode. My name's Ryan Bailey, joining me today, oh look, it's Marisona, the Jolary. Hi Jolary, how are you? It's me, I like how you can tell the Arizona and it's just by the oof that I bring to the recordings. I am thrilled to be here, Ryan. Listener questions, always some of my favorite, and today we're getting to talk some of that's directly in my wheelhouse towards the end of the show that I might go on for, I don't know, half hour straight about. We'll see. Let's find out. Jeff Bezos, is that the thing that's right in your wheelhouse? Yeah, yes, that's the one. That's what I meant. Oh, when Jol was off a couple weeks ago or last week, whenever that was, he was actually in Bezos' late coma. He got an invite to the wedding, actually. It's just me and Trevor Chalaba who were in coma together hanging out with me. I mean, it's the whole thing. That's it. There's no more details. Did you get to go on the rocket? Okay, I'll admit, we had rocket plans and we just didn't get there. We didn't get there. That's it. That's how Jol commutes know via rocket. The rocket, it's got a station named Casa Grande Arizona in the heart of the action. Graham Rosman, hello, how are you? I'm good, Ryan Bailey. I have a question for you. How ready are you for the new season? Because obviously, with their American teams, they've just played all the way through the summer. But for us as Europeans with European teams are, I think, AFC Wembley then season may have already started. Oh, yes. Did you play Newport County at the weekend? Where did the Cup game, yeah. Yeah, so how ready were you for that? Like me, would you rather have another couple of weeks before the real stuff starts? Emotionally, not ready. Physically, not ready mentally. Also not ready. Right, okay, cool. All three. Yeah, same. But it's coming and I can't wait. Community, community shield this weekend. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Arsenal, Arsenal Man City, I believe. Yeah, that sounds right. I'm not even 100% about that. That tells you how ready I am for the new season. Community shield called the community shield because it used to be called the charity shield until a court told them they could no longer call it that because they didn't give enough money to charity. What event? So now it's the community shield. What's community about it? I have no idea, but that's been the name of it for the last 15 years. Wow. I should just call it the Super Cup. That's it. Are the Super League? Is that taken? Oh, let's workshop that one. We've got plenty of questions to get to on our list of questions episode here. And also plenty on our bonus feed. You can get there at patreon.com slash total soccer show bonus episodes including a little bonus list of the question we're going to handle. Hey, Joe, have you heard Peter Greenwood's question? He wants to know who's going to win the World Cup first out of Canada. Or the United States of America. We're going to tackle that one on the bonus feed. Give away nothing, Joe. Give away nothing. Pattern dry, dry as a bone. Yeah, that's coming on the bonus feed. Much more on the including access to our discord server. All the cool kids are hanging out. Patreon.com slash total soccer show. One more bit of business before we get to the questions. Graham, you've been doing some typing on your laptop to the effect of a newsletter. Yes, that's right. So some listeners might know about my newsletter, the soccer dispatch. If you don't, it is a newsletter that focuses on I guess soccer stories you might not find in the mainstream. So I send it every Monday and Thursday. Today's newsletter, for example, is about Malawi's incredible run to the final of the women's Afcon, which has been one of the best stories of the entire year. It's their first ever Afcon and their first ever Afcon. And they've beaten the defending champions. They have beaten Algeria and now they're into the final on Sunday. That's this week's newsletter. Last week's was about FC Copenhagen's recovery after last season when the nearly got relegated. The week before that was about Vietnam and their growth as a soccer nation recently. So you get the idea here. I've counted up how many countries I've covered in the newsletter over the last three years. It's over 150 countries now that I've written about soccer. And so if that sounds like your sort of thing, I am running a $5 season ticket offer to be a paid subscriber for a full year. I really need some more numbers to keep it viable. It takes a lot of time and effort to produce every newsletter two per week. So if you're interested, please go to thesockerdespatch.com, forward slash season ticket and grab that $5 offer. It would mean enough a lot to me. What did you say? I'm 150 countries you've done so far. Yeah, 153 I think it was. Yeah, that's way more than that. It's like a solid C, right? You're like three-quarters of the country. I don't know. You're making progress, but there's still some work to do. No, genuinely, it's excellent. I got the Malawi one this morning and it gave me a chance to just remember how much I love Tamashu Wingo, who has just been ridiculous at Wafcon. She is just an absolute superstar. It's been fun seeing more and more people come to realize that. Yeah, the sheer breadth that you cover, Graham is ridiculous and hurts my brain. So it is, it's really good. I'm a subscriber and other people should be too. Likewise, very good news letter, but that's enough shielding for Graham right now. Let's get to our listening question. I'm telling you, Joey. I don't know because I'm too shallow. I was being in touch with this one. If you had Jeff Bezos money, would you buy part of Liverpool or buy part of a small club and try to spend your way up the pyramid? What is Bezos' goal? Is he trying to make money or just the status of owning a big club? This comes Graham on the news that Jeff Bezos is part of consortium that will take the piece of Liverpool. And it's a good question from Chip because he could easily buy a club or a league's worth of clubs. But I presume with a club like Liverpool, this is kind of a soft power exercise. This is outing a piece of something to eventually get more a seat at the table. Maybe for broadcast, maybe for something else, but it seems like a little marching creep of soft power to me. What say you? Yeah, I think that's probably a fair read of the situation, Ryan. This is a huge deal. By the way, it's kind of flown under the radar a little bit with everything that's been going on these last few weeks and a world cup and all that, all that good stuff. But it's not a majority stake of Liverpool that Bezos and this consortium are buying, but it's 30% that is still a huge chunk of one of the biggest clubs in the world. It's more than Sir Jim Ratcliffe and any of us own of Manchester United. And it is a deal that values Liverpool at £4.5 billion makes on one of the most valuable football clubs in the world. That is a huge inflation on what FSG paid to buy Liverpool in 2010 when they paid £300 million for the club. So I guess there's two sides to this. One is the sort of soft power aspect which you outlined, Ryan, of Liverpool already having investors, including LeBron James. So it gets Bezos a seat at the table next to LeBron and whatever that may lead to. The critic of Barskebel, you mean? That's right, the critic of Barskebel. That's how most people know him. So there's a soft power aspect to this. The other aspect is just purely financial, I presume. And I guess Bezos is betting on the value of the club. And Premier League clubs in general inflating further. You know, the Lakers sold for £12 billion this week to Bob Eiger and Josh Kushner, who's moved on quickly from the FIFA Cypher League idea. So there is still upside for Premier League clubs. I don't know if soccer clubs will ever get to that sort of valuation just because of the uncertainty around soccer clubs and the way that competitions work in promotion and relegation. But I absolutely believe that clubs, the biggest clubs in Europe and Europe certainly Premier League clubs can get even richer and even more valuable. And Bezos, if he's smart about this 10 years down the line, might cash in and make even more money on this investment. It's an interesting point, Graham. And I don't think it's a bad point. I think in general what you're looking at when you buy a sports team from a financial perspective is probably not to be making money year over year in the short term. But to have the enterprise value, the value of the asset increase over a set period of time, right? I think that's absolutely what FSG has done here. Incredibly well. And you mentioned the £300 million number. They have, I mean, this is a slam dunk for them. Like they, I think they've always been open to sort of outside investment to recoup some of their original costs and the money that they poured into the club over the years. And this is that and then some for them. So I think this is a slam dunk from an FSG perspective other than any potential backlash that comes from people not enjoying Jeff Bezos and his participation as part of this consortium. I will say on the finance is bit, I'd be pretty surprised if that was the primary motivation, not to suggest that you're saying it is. But I mean, really, if you want to spend a huge sum of money on this sort of thing, if you want to spend a billion dollars on this, you can spend a billion dollars on a lot of other things that will give you a much better return on your money. Like that, I mean, maybe that wasn't true when FSG bought it and they sort of bought low. And maybe, maybe who knows, maybe in 30 years time, Liverpool will be worth $40 billion. That seems unlikely to me. As a rule in terms of investment, you can invest giant sums of money and other things that are going to make you a lot more money than that sports team. Like I think at the core, people buying sports teams is because they like fun toys, right? And as people, we all like fun toys, my toy probably looks a bit different than Jeff Bezos' toy. Although when I was in coma with him, you know, we shared, really. He got to use some of my stuff. He's got all the toys. He's got one of those like underground, or underwater submarine, like scooter things. You just scoot around the pool as a whole thing. Well, he's got all the toys. He's got that because I gave it to him while I was there. And he was sharing that kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly. So to me, Slip and Slide and the Garden. To me, to me, this to me, this feels like you want to buy from Amazon. Yes, this is my wish list. So I think I know you're good. I think this is Bezos wanting a fun toy. And probably also what you guys have talked about already of who can he sit next to in these sorts of things. But really, he can already sit next to everybody he wants, right? I mean, I'm not even that sure I buy the soft power argument unless I didn't understand fully what you are articulating, Ryan. Bezos can get in any room on the planet. So I don't know, he's not emotionally invested in many things in his life, probably. And this is something to be emotionally invested in and a fun thing to show off to other people. Yeah, but we've seen rich people use soccer clubs as like protection in the past. And I don't know what protection Jeff Bezos would need. But we saw it with Roman Abramovich, right? Like that was the play with Chelsea was to become more protected by becoming more of a public figure in a sphere that people care about. Like the as depressing as it is and we see this with the Saudi investment in Newcastle United, when you invest in a football club, you basically buy supporters who are willing to vouch for you one way or another. And so I wonder if this is just a case of Bezos having 10 different reasons for buying and to Liverpool. One of them is financial. One of them is soft power. One of them is just fun to invest in a football club. If it was purely one of these reasons, like if it's purely to buy a toy, surely Jeff Bezos, richest man in the world, who's got a valuation of tens, hundreds of billions actually, he'll just buy Liverpool out, right? Like if they're valued at $4.5 billion, that's pocket change for someone like Jeff Bezos. So I feel like he is, he's maybe spreading his intentions across a number of different ways. And I'm interested to see if this is like a base camp for Jeff Bezos and this in this consortium to ultimately buy FSG out completely in the years to come. Yeah, could be, could be. I bought a plastic container to hold dog treats for Amazon last week. Have I inadvertently funded the Liverpool takeover for resource there? It's all your fault just because of that one type of wear. I think that's right on the money. What would you guys do to the first part of Chip's question? If you had Bezos money, I kind of get the sense that you guys wouldn't buy in it all beyond whatever sign investment. We're the wrong people to ask. Yeah, that's the top of my list. It's just the way I'm wired. I would never buy a club. Like my dream with Starlan Albion is to donate a whole lot of money for them to buy players and do fun things with. But I don't know, like the socialist, the soccer socialist in me, I guess, is against rich people owning clubs. Yeah, I think idealistic collegiate, if I had Bezos money, I would do two things. I would anonymously donate to FC Wimbledon, or become obvious because my donations would be big to the club every year. And there is a club I would buy. I would buy MK Dunes and I would shut it out. Ah, nice. That's tremendous. I mean, if you are wired to buy a club, surely the more fun thing to do is to build a club up from the lower leagues, right? I think so. Yeah, for me, for me, that's sort of where I went where I would buy into my hometown team, like Phoenix Ryzen or whatever, soccer looked like when I make 80 bajillion dollars, I don't know what the landscape's going to look like, that maybe the desert will be uninhabitable by then. I really don't know. But I think that would mean more to me than buying into a giant club, or really even any club, bigger, small, somewhere else that I don't really have an attachment to. Like I know as humans, we will build that attachment over time. I'm sure Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElaney are very attached to rexmen at this point. I have no doubt that I would grow attached to whatever that thing was, but I'd rather just be attached to it from the start if that's possible. So maybe that wouldn't be possible, maybe it would. But I would, I think I would start close to home before I moved anywhere else. Yeah. It's nice to fantasize about these kind of things. And of course, when Graham gets the bump on his newsletter from this podcast, he's going to have to make some real decisions. So we'll see on that one. Chip Scheller, thank you very much. Indeed for your question. We take a break when we come back. We're asking you about managers bringing this staff with them. We're asking you about the best keepers who make the best outfield players and so much more. Join us then. Total soccer show, welcome back to our list of the questions. Discord stew has come in with this one. How typical is it for managers in top leagues to bring a staff with them when they come to a club? How much turnover of the coaching staff is typical? And how does Major League Soccer compare with top five leagues in this regard? Joe Lowry, I believe it's pretty common for a coach to bring their assistance with them when they go to a new club. And I think it's quite uncommon for them to come in and settle in with a completely unfamiliar staff. So then, what say you? Yeah, I think that's right on the money. I think it's normal for managers to bring at least part of their own coaching staff with them or maybe it's coaches they've worked with at previous stops when they change clubs. Typically though, and I think this is what you're getting to round if I understood you correctly, it's not the whole staff. Like they're not completely wiping clear any trace of the club that they're arriving at. I think that holds true in MLS and it holds true in Europe from best I can tell. I went through a few different examples. Deserby brought two coaches with him as far as I could tell from Tottenham, not a whole staff. Shabby Alonzo brought four of his coaches from Ramadred to Chelsea, retained some that were at Chelsea before he got there. Eureola brought four coaches with him deliver pool but didn't bring the same number or the same names with him from Rao Vajacano in Spain to Bournemouth in the first place. So you see some of this is circumstantial. And I've talked with one MLS coach about this somewhat recently Matt Wells who brought some managers with him to Colorado and some that he just sort of had the ability to bring base out of timing, right? I mean, all these assistant coaches have different career paths. They might have different ambitions that might include them being head coaches. So it may or may not make sense for them to go and come with their existing head coach. Maybe they'd be better off staying or going somewhere else or finding some other manager they worked up before to go and work with and move higher up the food chain. But generally speaking, you will see a percentage of the staff change with the manager bringing coming in. It's not a hurt of to have the whole staff change. I believe in Portland right now and maybe this is part of where Stu's question is coming from. Although Stu would know better than I, I believe Portland have overturned their entire coaching staff. At least the classic assistant coaches now with new manager Marty Cifuentes coming into the club. Liam Ridgewell left the other day. I think they've been turned over even before that. I couldn't find any assistant coaches on Portland's website that were the same best I could tell from the era before. So it's not totally crazy to think about turning over an entire staff. But generally speaking, I think there's some practical elements for this, right? If you're coming into new terrain, wouldn't you want some voices that have experience and kind of understand things about the club and the dynamics there, the personal relationships or relationships with players that you just don't know. I think it makes sense to keep something over from the previous regime, even if it also makes sense to turn over a lot and bring in people you're comfortable with and that that work with you really well. Yeah, I think it's common to see a mix, right? And one of the best examples of this was related to the documentary series that I've just finished watching, but Merino at Chelsea, who had his guy, Rui Faria, who followed him around loads of clubs and maybe still does to this day. He had Faria on one side and then he had Steve Clarke on the other side, which is such a, it gives me whipplash every single time we see in Steve Clarke as Josephineo's assistant. And Clarke was the Chelsea guy, right? And when you came to really trust Clarke and that was a really effective trio, it is common for top managers to bring along their own coaching staff. So Port Stino is a good example of this. Jesus Perez has been his right-hand man everywhere he's been. Paul Clement has followed Carlo Ancelotti pretty much everywhere he has gone as well, but it's also very common for clubs to impose coaches on managers. I don't think that's always a bad thing for the reasons that Joe just outlined there. I do kind of wonder how those discussions go, though, when they are appointing a new manager. Because sometimes, best example of this is Big Ange. He never seems to get his own staff. He goes into Tottenham and it's just the Tottenham coaching staff who went into Celtic and he was John Kennedy who's been around at Celtic forever as his assistant. So I don't know whether that was Ange saying, I'm quite happy being on my own or whether he just didn't have the leverage in those discussions for the clubs to also bring in his coaching staff, which I'd imagine is an expensive thing to do. So yeah, I always wonder how those discussions go and whether it's related to how much leverage a manager has in those negotiations. Yeah, I always think it's really hard to say you're an assistant coach or you're part of the scouting network or whatever. And the coach gets fired and it's like, okay, I'd be fired for someone else being fired today, which is quite common. It's okay. Well, I thought that with Eddie Ho, resigning as Newcastle related manager, I was like, I'll produce in Tendor. He doesn't have a job, no, for the new season. Yeah, and that could be quite far reaching because obviously their coaches can bring several staff, not just their immediate one or two. Paul Clements, the one you mentioned, Graham, I always think of him. So I believe he started with Ange, Chelsea because Paul Clements are a Londoner then followed him to PSG Ramadrid by a minute. He's now Brazil's assistant coach is Paul Clements. Not bad. Not bad little career trajectory for him who was his actual, he's done a few jobs on his own, Derby Swansea Redding. So he's a, he's not quite up to the same level. Yeah, he's a, I've had a taste of the champ while I'll hedge my wagon back onto Don Carlo. Yeah, the, the enchilotti coattails are doing nicely for Paul Clements. It was obviously a very proficient assistant coach and coach in his own right. And from my experience in him, Major League Soccer as well, I've seen, short, seven-year Charlotte of C, there's fairly wholesale coming and going of managerial staff. Remember when Miguel and Helen Ramirez, remember him? He was the first coach at Charlotte C. He brought an entire staff with him who'd been with him in Brazil, including like Scout, Chief Scout and everybody, not Chief Scout, one over scouting team and everybody else. And they all went with him to his next job. Dean Smith brought his own people over as well. So it's, it is, I think, fairly replicable in Major League Soccer in my experience anyway. Yeah, there we go. Cool, Discord's too. Thank you very much. Oh, to be an assistant coach for Carlo and Chilotti. Miles Reedy has come in with this question. In your opinion, what goalkeeper would be the best in the outfield? Now, Joe, when I say outfield, I assume they mean soccer rather than the baseball. Yeah, I was saying in center-fielder, but I'd do this all wrong. I think it might have done it wrong. The classic, I always come to his mammal, Noia, who I think in training would often play as an outfield player. And I think there's a couple of keepers who are a bit like that. Joe, any thoughts on this question? Yeah, I went with the obvious answer. I think Florian Vaigala, 25 year old goalkeeper for Victoria Pilsen. In the chat, we all had him, right? He's on short list. Yeah. And we all know him, we all know who he is, and we all know why I picked him. He plays in the check top flight. The why is he is the tallest goalkeeper I could find playing right now at six foot nine inches. Look, lots of goalkeepers are good with their feet. None of them. I don't think there's a single goalkeeper on the planet playing at professional level who is good enough to play in the outfield at a high level. They might be good enough at passing forward, right? I mean, that's a lot of what goalkeepers do. They lack every other attribute. They lack the 360 degree vision and experience receiving the ball on tight spaces. They lack dribbling. They lack strength, speed, acceleration. I mean, it's just a totally different sport that goalkeepers are playing. I understand that their sport is sort of melded more with the outfield sport in recent times because it's been helpful. And coaches have realized how they can get an extra number on the field in their possession and defensive setups. But really goalkeepers can't hack it. They're just zero, zero chance. Absolutely zero. So I wanted to find a specialist. Like if you actually came to me and said, we need you to find a goalkeeper and he has to play 15 minutes off the bench in the outfield somewhere. Who are you going to pick? I wouldn't pick Manuel Neuer. I wouldn't pick it, Harrison, who I think is maybe the best passing goalkeeper that I've seen. Or at least some of the passes he hits are just outrageous, right? So maybe that's how I would describe it. But I want to find a specialist, someone who you could actually use sort of conceivably in desperate situations, whatever, whatever the parameters of the assignment were. That led me to my look for a giant, pretty glass-in-case of emergency striker. Florian Vagala, he's going up top towards the end of games. I imagine he can chest up all down and like maybe, maybe, probably not, but maybe find a pass to a trailing runner or maybe go and be a target in the box and try to get ahead or somewhere near the goal. I don't really want him having to do any more than that because I just don't think that's probably going to go very well. But I think that would go better than putting a goalkeeper anywhere near their own area, anywhere near areas where they're going to have to touch the ball a lot or cover a lot of ground. That's just not going to work. Yeah, totally agreed, Joe, as I might notice as well. Like goalkeepers, they don't run. Like, are they going to have the running ability to play, I feel that I just highly doubt it. I mean, if we're talking about the Paul Skoles, like the late career Paul Skoles role in position, where he just stayed like in the center circle and sprayed passes around, then maybe Ederson could do that. That role doesn't really exist in 2026 in modern soccer. So I wouldn't pick any goalkeeper to play outfield, but I think Ederson, I didn't go as in depth as Joe. I didn't go to the check. What was that check? The check-out flight, yeah. But Tori, as we know them, we've seen them in European gambitites. Oh, I've heard of them. I just don't know who they're starting goalkeeper is right now. 40 in Vagola. There we go. Now I do know, but Ederson, maybe there's a Turkish cup game for him actually could give Ederson a run out in, as a midfielder or something. I think he's the best ball playing goalkeeper in the history of the game. Manual Neuer, I think, is the best, like, rushing off his line goalkeeper in the history of the game. Manual Neuer often, when he gets to the ball, I'm not convinced actually knows what to do with the ball. Whereas Ederson is always very calm under pressure. David Raya is pretty decent in that regard as well. Juan Garcia is up there for Brugan for Brighton as decent as well, but none of these guys can run. So I wouldn't pick any of them. I do wonder, if you took a goalkeeper, let's say at youth level, like a high youth level underneath a big club, I wonder if you then completely change their training. Let's say they're 17 years old and you only play them at defensive midfield in every single game and they took their lumps because there's gonna be a lot of lumps. I wonder if you could turn that player into like a probably a low level professional, but some sort of professional soccer player because it's not like these guys aren't good athletes, right? I mean, goalkeepers are tremendous athletes. It's just what is the athletic requirement of what they're doing compared to what the outfield players doing? It's the same reason why the, well, what if our best athletes in America play soccer argument doesn't really make a lot of sense? Like would LeBron James be a great soccer player? I dare you to find me, any great soccer players you've ever been as tall as he is. You can't, right? So there are like practical restrictions on what these players can be, but if it was a more normal heighted goalkeeper and if you gave them experience and you allowed them to develop athletically a little bit different, I wonder if, if like, Aderoson could have been something more than he is as far as an outfield players concerned. He made the right call to be very clear about that. He did the best thing for himself in his career, but I don't think it would be impossible for you to pivot your development if you're like a really special, special athlete and special thinker, but it would just be so incredibly difficult. Enzo Zadan. Who I believe played, he played that, that's the Indian Zadan son who looking at his Wikipedia, he also played as a midfielder. Look at Lucas Zadan, right? Is that Lucas Zadan? Not Enzo. Yeah, but Enzo Zadan is one of his sons, right? That's another one, isn't it? He's Enzo Zadan. Also, he's just a midfielder, Enzo. I was looking at Enzo Zadan, which he played, yeah. Lucas Zadan, let me try that again. Lucas Zadan, what do we think of him? He's interesting. He's famous dad, who's really good. That's interesting. Maybe, maybe he's got the best chance. I do, the other thing I always say, just on Manuel Neuer, because he's one that comes to mind for me in these kinds of questions quite a lot as well, because I think he was sort of early in this trend, right, of goalkeepers that were asked to do something, other than just stop shots. And some of that was distribution, but some of it also grand was, to your point, coming off the line. And speaking of Charlotte, I remember chatting with Christian Kalina a couple of years back, and he talked about just how underrated it was, how under-discussed it is, about goalkeepers and how difficult those moments when they come off their line to sweep up R. Like, really are, where you're basically dealing with split second, almost race car-esque reaction times, where you have to decide, in the, like, less than the blink of an eye, is this the moment for me to come off my line? Is my depth perception absolutely correct here? For me to go and sweep up the play, just end the attack, or am I gonna be ended because they're gonna round me, and I'm gonna get scored on. I mean, that has got to be one of the most difficult things to do in this sport. We always talk about how scoring goals is the hardest thing, and that is probably true in a lot of ways. But I think that action from a goalkeeper is just tremendously difficult. So maybe if you found the smartest goalkeeper doing that sort of thing at a young age, and then you develop them as an outfield player instead, maybe they would have the, I don't know, like, Pedriesque, off-ball smarts, to understand how to move, and you could develop them technically and physically, at least a little bit, and they could go and have a nice outfield career. Lucas is a Dan, by the way, his middle name is Zinedine. So, it's not, Enzo's the Dan's middle name is. Luca Zinedine, Zidane. Luca Zidane's the Dan's the Dan's final answer. Zizu, it's Alan. That's not it, that's it. Alan. I think it's my favorite. Is he the younger son? There's gotta be a bit of a French flourish to that pronunciation. I think you just thought Michael Serra's character in the Bobby movie. That's all I can, who doesn't? Yeah, exactly. There we go. Good stuff, Miles Reedy. Thank you very much for your question. We take one more break when we come back. We've got more for you, including. We're gonna try and put together an 11 of American men's college soccer. Woo, join us then. Total soccer show, welcome back to our list of questions. We go now to Space Dress, Space Dress. We're going to this guy who says, I am a Liverpool fan and when I was younger, during the Rogers era, unfortunately, and the early club era, I used to watch almost every single game, every season. But as I grew older and family and working kids and other hobbies took up my time, my soccer consumption trended more towards podcasts. Thank you. Online articles, social media posts and highlights when I found small bits of time in my day. I rarely sit down and watch a full game anymore. Is this more of a trend of aging soccer fans balancing life? Or more of a trend of how soccer is consumed in general in the modern era? Graeme, I could certainly relate to Space Dress, Space Dress here with this one. I think I watched less screens in general because life is just quite busy. Obviously, we watched a lot of soccer here for the total soccer show, but the last time I fired up Netflix or HBO was quite a while ago. So I think it's maybe it's a bit of a trend of just life being very busy in 2026 for many of us. And also things are changing in the way things are consumed. So maybe it's a balance of both to answer the question there. Yeah, it's interesting that this is about an aging fan not really watching film statues because that's something you hear with younger fans a lot, right? And I think people tire themselves and all sorts of not suggesting that soccer matches need to be shorter or somehow more exciting or on TikTok looking at you, Florentino Perez. When in actual fact, I think that it is an issue of access for young fans. I feel strongly that that is the case in the UK because when I was growing up and Ryan, I'm sure you'll attest to this as well. All the big games were free to watch. Like I could watch the Champions League games on ITV and FA Cup games as well. And now they're all behind a paywall so that's absolutely not the case now. I think that's the biggest challenge. So I think in this specific instance in Space Driz's question, I think this might be a case of like other things getting in the way of consuming as much soccer. I don't think there's any denying soccer has been consumed in a different way. And I think culture in general has changed. I just don't think matches now have like the same build up and I guess like cultural importance that they used to have because the monoculture doesn't exist anymore. Like even 15 years ago, we all used to watch the same things and do the same things and now the things that we consume and the way that we consume them are so varied and so fragmented and that supplies to music and TV shows. And I was visiting family over the weekend and they'd be like, oh, do you watch this TV show? And I'd like never heard of it at all and then we would recommend TV shows to them. And I am of the opinion that everyone's watching these TV shows they'd never heard of those. There's like a number one song in the UK at the moment from an artist I'm familiar with and it's been at number one for 15 weeks. I hadn't heard of it until like a couple of weeks ago. So I just feel like the monoculture isn't there anymore and so that might be a factor as well as there's just so much soccer now and we're all watching different soccer on different apps and on different mediums. So I definitely think there's a bit of a trend here. I just don't know whether it is a generational trend. I think it might be a bit more widespread than that. Yeah, Joe. How do you feel being very much part of the same generation as Graham and I? That's right. Yeah, I mean, just kind of experienced in that way. I almost feel like we're the worst possible people to answer this question. Even though I think you guys have given some very good color to all this, we're still sitting down and watching a lot of soccer. And that's kind of... I'm watching more soccer than any other putt in my life. Right. So I almost feel like this is a better question for the discord answer if I'm totally honest because I think there's gonna be a much more representative group in there. I know right now I watch a lot of soccer and I think if I wasn't working in soccer, I would still watch a lot of soccer and that would become my hobby instead of my job. So I don't really know exactly if this is a trend of soccer fans balancing life or trend in a different way. I honestly, I'm not sure if I had to guess. I think it's a bit of both, right? It is absolutely easier to consume soccer in different ways now, right? You go through and I think the understanding of being able to go through and watch social media highlights and highlights in general, that's just different than the way things were 30 years ago or even less than 30 years ago when it comes to social media. So there are absolutely more avenues to watch soccer or to have a sense of what's going on in the soccer world in less time. And I think in that way, we've all kind of filled that line. Ryan, I think you talked about life being busy in 2026 or something like that. I kind of think that's nonsense and we've just made it that way, right? I mean, it's not life that's doing that. It's us that have done that to ourselves. We've filled every moment of time. It's almost impossible. Let me, let me say it differently. It takes real discipline to make time for yourself in a day. It's so easy for me just to feel every waking moment of the day with some screen or some entertainment, like entertainment is so cheap and it didn't used to be that way. And so I think we very much are making life busier for ourselves, not the responsibilities don't increase as you age to a certain point. Absolutely do. Kids, I don't have any kids yet. All those things change your life and I'm not blind to the vague reality that that is a true thing. But really, I think we just make it that way for ourselves. So things are busy to a degree, but it's also easier to just consume, consume, consume and then you have responsibility. So I think it's a bit of both buckets, but really I'm probably like one of the worst people on the planet to answer this question. We, of course we do do it to ourselves, but I think it is a valid point, Joe, that the attention economy is busier than ever. I started my journalism career in magazines. They were these sort of things made of paper. They were bound together. They would come out monthly weekly. Paper like a screen made to look like paper, right? Something like that. Something like that. I understand, yeah. Yeah, so I had it explain to me quite concisely by an editor once that there was a time when people would come home from work or they'd be on the weekend and they would sit down in a chair and pick up one of these things, this magazine and they would flick through it and they would read the pages. But that just simply didn't happen anymore because the attention economy kind of diverting people's attention. A lot of it is due to phones, a lot of it is due to social media, a lot of it is due to lifestyle changes for people going to the gym and do other stuff. There's more competing for your dollar and your attention outside of your work and family obligation. So I think that kind of does play into the soccer watching too. And I think it also plays into some of the moves we've seen from FIFA or who sort of suggested, what was it? I can't remember who suggested maybe shorter games. Parasite. Yeah, I mentioned that one. Yeah. Yes, it has all kinds of ideas. Yeah, exactly. Apart from like making it easy for people to watch film matches, you know, and cheaper. That's not be ridiculous, Graham. That idea has escaped him for some reason. But I do buy the idea that for a younger person sitting down for 90 minutes, two hours straight for a game is a tall order. Which is, I'm really jealous. No, I was just gonna say that that's, I don't disagree. That's just so sad. Like there's nothing stopping people from sitting down and reading this is me talking about sides of my mouth because I'm not really doing that, right? But there's nothing, there's zero things stopping everybody from just doing that. Like it doesn't have to be the way that things are now. Like I think there's a lot of victim mentality that can come up with this sort of thing of like, you know, I'm just a product of the generation that I'm in, yada, yada, yada. I mean, you can do whatever you want. Like magazines still exist. You can sit down and watch eight soccer games in a row if you'd like to and in two hours each and not look at your phone all the time. All these things are possible. I know I've sort of strayed from the original question. I just think it's easy to make excuses for like whittling your life away with all these things and it's, yeah, just sad. I agree with that, Joe, but the reality is, and I'm guilty of this myself. Like I will just doom scroll my phone for like an hour rather than actually doing something with that time and that's the case for most people. And I think that eats into what I was talking about with the monoculture, right? Like watching that merino docu-series which I promise I will stop referencing. But the build up to the inter Barcelona Champions League semi-finals, like I just don't think that's possible now. Like I remember it and I don't think that's nostalgia. Like I'm wary of nostalgia, maybe clouding my view and memory of things here. But the way that games used to have us a cultural importance, I just don't think is the case anymore. And because they're just so much competing for attention and everyone's on their phones and they'll, because of the way that we consume things now they will watch a 90 second clip of something. Maybe not even that long on TikTok or on Instagram, rather than sitting down and watching an actual football match. So that I think that's a big factor. It is, there we go. All right, Spatius, thank you very much for your question. If you want to talk more about that of course, as just suggested, you can go to our discord and chat all about that on their Patreon.com slash tutorials. Soca show, we've got one more question for this episode. It's a biggie from beefy baller in our discord. Beefy baller. Yeah, no notes. What's the best starting 11? You can muster of soccer players who played American men's college soccer. Note, that's not limited to American players. Just players who spent time on the NCAA programs. What level could that all college side compete at? What does it say about the potential and quality of the unique collegiate game? Joe, is this a tall order for this 11 together? How you feeling? Ah, this is great. This is just a satisfying order for me. I want to be clear about how I approach this because I think it's in the spirit of the question. I went through and built my 11 of more recent college soccer players rather than all time college soccer players. Not that I think it'd be wrong to do the former. But I think for a while, college soccer was the way to the top for American players in the men's game in the United States. And so you had a lot of players going and coming through college and being drafted into Major League Soccer and going from there because academy systems weren't fit and firing at that point for MLS clubs. Now they are. And so now, I'm not sure if we're getting, I mean, Clint Dempsey is a bit of an interesting story, right? But maybe we're not getting Clint Dempsey going to Firm and maybe he's actually just going into the FC Dallas Academy. Brad Freetle, Jeff Agus, Marcelo Balboa, Eddie Pope, Lollitz, Beeslor, Gonzalez, Raina, Ramos, McBride. Like, I mean, there's some not quite as legendary players in there, but that's a lot of really good players in the history of American men's player development. Some of them are national team legends. And I just don't think that those guys are coming through the college game today and probably not even 10 years ago. So to get more to the spirit of the question about what level could this college team can beat at and what does it say about the quality of the college game right now, I think to answer that, I wanted to come a little bit more recent. So I went from kind of the mid-2010s on, it's not a great cut off, but I think it's fine. So anyway, here's my 11 within that restriction. I'm going to read through my 11, and then I want to hear how you guys think this team could compete, like what league, what level, that sort of thing. So I'll run through it. Goalkeeper, Matt Frees, I was at Harvard, I don't have all the schools, but I know he was at Harvard because he comes up all the time. Right winged back, I've gone with the back three of Alster Johnson. Center back, I have Mark McKenzie, Moist Bumbito, and Hallamarr Ectal, who is with Sweden at the World Cup. He's a Burnley center back played, I think a good number of minutes in the Premier League last year. Left wing back is Max Arvston, in midfield, I have said Baralt, they're in Christian Roldon. At right wing, I have Tajeon Buchanan. At, oh, excuse me. He's sort of like an attacking midfield, they're kind of floating over to the right. And then the rest of my attack is Patrick Ajaman and Tani Olaweshe. So that is my 11. Frees, Johnston, McKenzie, Bumbito, Ectal, Arvston, Baralt, or Roldon Buchanan, Ajaman and Olaweshe. Really, Roldon was the one I had to go back further to get because I just couldn't find a lot of center mids. Joe Bell was at Virginia, he played for New Zealand at the World Cup, and he's at Viking over in Scandinavia. I don't think he's a great player, but he's also a functional player. So you can make this even more recent and include somebody like that over Roldon who's much more of the veteran. Graham, where do you think that that team could play and not do kind of okay, I guess? Jordan, may I have your two forwards? I have Ajaman and Olaweshe. Right. And then Tajeon is kind of somewhere. What's that? Well, I was maybe expecting Jordan Morris' name to come up. Yeah, no, no, Jordan Morris, I guess, he's just not as good as the guys I have in here today. Maybe that was just a current assessment of those players. And I think that team wins MLS Cup. I think the depth of that team is in that selection of players is better. Joe, disagree with me. You'll move the more. No, I think that's kind of what I was thinking. I think this is a deeper 11 players than anything in MLS right now. Yeah, I was hoping for like, I don't know whether the attack I was hoping for maybe a slightly higher level attacking deference maker, but I guess Tony is, you know, he's playing at a good level in Europe. Tajeon too, yeah. And Tajeon as well. So like, yeah, this team wins MLS Cup. Yeah, I had this team down as like very much could win and conquer half champions Cup. I think, especially if you built out the rest of the depth, I think what this team has at MLS teams don't have, and this is just based on the roster rules, is a really good defense. I mean, it's quite a defensive setup. I suppose with Johnston as like your right wing back, but really Arsson's gonna balance it out on the other side because he's not gonna do any of that stuff. So I just think the fact that you have a defense that is actually solid and strong is so rare. I think that would really help them compete. For me, this is a team that I think avoids relegation in every league on the planet except the Premier League. I think this team gets relegated in a heartbeat in the Premier League, but I think basically everywhere else, any of the other big leagues in Europe, I think they're lower mid table probably. I mean, maybe flirting with relegation in some, but I think they'd probably be okay or at least be close to okay. And that leads me to the takeaway to get, to I think the real question here. I think College Soccer has lots of potential and continues to have potential and demonstrates it regularly as an alternative development pathway where yes, the Academy system should be primary and it's primary. It has been since these have come into existence and it will be in the future as well. That's not gonna change. Hopefully it gets even more that way as USL clubs, I mean, assuming this all survives for however long, USL clubs build out their own Academy systems and start developing talent that's coming into the youth national teams and the professional level moving abroad, moving to MLS, et cetera. Academy should only be getting more and more important. But there's a lot of people in the US and there's a lot of people who have come to the College Soccer from elsewhere. We talked about Jack Harrison, Jeff and I on Tuesday's show who was at NYCFC after playing high school soccer in the US and then playing College Soccer. There's a lot of paths. You have a lot of international players, not just Canadian players, but a lot of players coming from Europe that play College Soccer. I could always just one of those examples. There's a bunch more. It will always exist. I think men's College Soccer as a path for players. It just isn't probably gonna have players for the most part that have the same ceilings Graham just saw what you were getting out of. I'm waiting for one like really game-changing player. I think the system is kind of designed against that and I think it's okay, right? You're still gonna get Champions League level players, truly coming through College Soccer once every five or 10 years or so. I know that's probably right about right. And I think it's valuable because it can be a different path for different kinds of people, for different kinds of players. And that's kind of cool to be honest. If we were building an American high school team, we could maybe have that difference maker in the form of Yantia Mandi. I like it. I like the weird disc career today and it somehow ended up at Real Madrid, but yeah, we can't include them in this selection. He went to American high school. Well, he played high school soccer in Florida for like a year for reasons that are still kind of unknown. Let's go to the chase. I don't actually know exactly what his high school involvement was. He was playing like UPSL soccer and all this other stuff, semi-pro soccer. I'm guessing there was a lot of agent like disgustingness that was happening there. To be clear, I don't really know about this. So maybe I shouldn't speculate, fire trucker lawyers, et cetera, et cetera. I don't imagine that was like the best situation for him as a human being, as a young child living away from it anyway. Not said, I'm sure it was not said. It does kind of seem like his agent made a real John Geranov, his early stages of his career, but he's ended up at Real Madrid now. So I guess it is all worked out. Joe, about 15 years ago, with the level at Starlin' Albion are at, that was a real time about 15 years ago. We lost so many players to American colleges, like young players would go and play. There was like companies, there was a company set up called, what was it called? First point, USA or something like that. And their whole gig was Ryan making the faces. That's our name, Ryan, don't make that face. I don't like turning point USA, which is a different thing. That's a different thing. It was a company to design to set up players in colleges in the US. It was really, really successful. I don't think that is so much of a thing now because those pathways from college soccer into the professional game with the proliferation of MLS academies are maybe not so strong now, but I still think it's a good place for young players to go, not just from the US, but from around the world. Very good. I always wished that I went to college in the US and played in the college soccer there, because I played college soccer in the UK, where a man and his dog might be watching you if you want to. It's not the same thing. No. It's still, I'm used to it by now, having covered American soccer for the last whatever, 15 years, but it's still, college sport is still a bit of an alien concept to me. The fun. The fact, I remember we did a listen to questions sometime about like the biggest stadiums in the world, and almost all of them were either out of our college football stadiums. It is a totally different beast. I think there's a cultural difference for sure. The one thing I am really curious about from college soccer on the men's side is US soccer came out. I think at some point in the last year, with the recommendations for how to reshape college soccer, which I think could be incredibly promising. Well, right now, college soccer for both men and women is just from the, it's just in the first semester, right? It's the first half of the school year. So that's not even half of a full year. It goes basically from August to the end of that first school semester before the holidays. That's not a great environment to develop, to be developing soccer players. And yet, still players are coming through that and contributing at high levels professionally. If the landscape changes for it to be across the whole school year, August to May basically mirrors the professional season, or what will be the professional season at the top levels, and even some of the lower divisions in the US. And then also around a lot of the other biggest leagues in the world, I do wonder how much that could help college soccer. Again, I still think the ceiling of a lot of these players will be lower because the best ones will go elsewhere. But I do wonder if we could see college soccer produce even more solid professionals and maybe even more kind of fringe, Europa League champions league level players. I'm really curious to see what's going to happen there. I didn't know that about the timing, Joe. That's very interesting. Is that to mirror gridiron football to the similar season length or? No, I mean, even college football season isn't that long. I think very much, as I understand it, and there are people out there that understand more about this than me, US soccer as they should think that there's a lot of kind of untapped potential in college soccer. Really, I mean, women's college soccer continues to be kind of the dominant platform for top young players to come through and go into the professional ranks, although I think that's even shifting slightly with players that are just skipping it and going the academy route as the games become more professionalized. But I think right now soccer is just a difference, even the football season, like the professional football season isn't really as long as the soccer season. And so you end up with in college soccer to two games a week, basically every single week. That's the current cadence is you play twice a week every week in a condensed season. That's just not great for the body. I don't think it's optimal in that way. And it's not great for developing players. So I think US soccer is looking at this as a possibility to develop more good players. And I think that's exactly how they should be looking at it. Whether colleges will get on board if they can find a way to do it in a way that's cost effective for them. I don't know that the ins and outs that the finances of that situation, but I think it would be a really positive change. Yeah, two games a week as well for the college fans. Those kids won't have the attention spare for two games a week show with their Pac-Man video games and all that. I mean, maybe they show, but they're definitely tick tock scrolling, you know? That's just when you do it. That's probably it. There we go. Beefy baller, thank you very much indeed for your question. We hope we tackled it well. If you have a question, D-Listener, you can go to totalsockershow.com slash questions or you can access our discord and mention it once or twice already. You can get there at patreon.com slash totalsockershow. Well, we also have a bonus list in a question from Peter Greenwood about who's going to win the World Cup first, Canada or USA. And we also referenced the meridio documentary. We're going to be talking about that on the bonus feed as well. So do join us over there. But for now, for this episode, Joe Lowry, thank you very much indeed. Hey, thanks, Ryan. Thank you very much, great brother. Thank you, Ryan Billy. And listen, thank you again for joining us on this one. We'll be back on the feed very shortly indeed. But for now, bye.
