Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

With me today is a man who has been spending some time in the MLS Eastern Conference

but is now ready to talk about some Americans abroad.

It's Joe Lowry.

Hello, Joe.

Hello, Taylor.

That's right.

I've had my thoughts dwelling on the Eastern Conference, but I'm willing to expand. Let's hop across the Atlantic and talk about some of these other guys, doing some pretty awesome things in Europe right now. It was a good weekend. Maybe not across the board, but at least for the players that we're going to be discussing, it was mostly a pretty good time. But I do want to take a moment to talk about that Eastern Conference. You and Jordan with MLS Assist, did your Eastern Conference very specific predictions. Listen to it, enjoyed it. I feel like I need to learn more of the analytics terms because there's a few times when I was like, I'm really hoping they unpack this fully. And then you did. So I did appreciate that. But my big question I had after listening to that whole show, how many Eastern Conference teams do you think there are that you have a pretty good read on? And how many do you have the opposite of that for? Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot of coaching turnover in the East this year. So teams like DC United, Ben Olson's been coaching them for forever. Now it's Arnan Losada and a completely different manager with likely a different tactical style. But we don't really know how they're going to play. So DC's a wild card. Inter Miami with Phil Neville is a total wild card. The Montreal, oh, I almost did it. I did it again.

I did it on the show.

We had to start over again.

It's not the impact.

Club de Foot Montreal, I have no idea what they're going to look like because Terry Annery is gone. They've now promoted one of the assistants on their staff. Willford Nancy to be the head coach this season. and we have no idea how he operates tactically or how he wants to play really at all.

And then Toronto is another wild card with Chris Armis moving. He kind of unred-bowled the Red Bulls a little bit when he took over for Jesse Marsh a couple years ago. But he still likes to press and he still likes to play aggressively like the Red Bulls do. At least that's what he did in New York. Is he going to do that in Toronto when you have Michael Bradley and Josie Altador, guys that can't really run a whole lot but are still likely going to be a part of that squad? So yeah, Taylor, I would say maybe there are four or five teams that I just don't know what to expect from in the Eastern Conference. I don't want to, you know, spoil your show content too much.

But of those four that you mentioned, D.C., Miami, Montreal, Toronto, if you had to pick one team, if you had to get on the bandwagon of one for having a successful season, maybe making the playoffs, who would that be?

It's got to be Toronto.

They just have more talent than D.C. or Miami or Montreal.

They have a more established squad.

They have Posuelo, the reigning MLS MVP from last year.

He is phenomenal.

And if Chris Armus can figure out a way to use Alejandro Pazuelo in a constructive way

where not everything falls on his shoulders, but he still has the ability to run the show.

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