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

My name is Joe Lowry, and today we are diving into the world of Major League Soccer.

We're doing something different.

We were giving grades, report cards for every single team in the Western Conference.

We will do the same with the Eastern Conference next week.

I am not strong enough on my own to give grades for 15 Western Conference teams. So I have brought in the one, the only, everybody's favorite, Jeff Ruter. Jeff, thank you for being here. Have you ever given somebody a grade in real life before? No, but as the son of two teachers, I feel like this has kind of been my destiny to end up at this place. And by the way, Taylor is sorely missed, but he had heard this is another one of those episodes where we're going to try to put Joe and I on a clock to keep the show moving efficiently. And he knows how difficult those episodes are. And he decided that this was a good time for him to take some pre-World Cup load management time off. So Taylor, enjoy your time in the Bahamas. We will probably hear from you tomorrow. And yeah, Joe, we are handing out grades for the Western Conference because it's been the Bestern Conference so far this year. You know, as a desert dweller over here in the Southwest, I'm sick of all the Eastern elites. So we're going to Western Conference first.

What's the expression of West Coast, Best Coast? I don't know if that's true. I don't live on the place. But I feel more drawn to that side of things. So that's where we're going to go. Jeff, you're spot on. Taylor is in the Bahamas. He's not at all dealing with sick children. So I'm sure he will get the same amount of joinment out of both of those experiences before we go and we are

going to get going here because we've got a lot to get through on today's show before we do that

i don't know if people out there have heard. We are doing a live show, live, in person, physical. We will be there, really, and truly, at the L-Rae Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 11th. That is the opening day of the World Cup. Come hang out with us. TSSWorldcup.com has all the info you need.

Jeff, let's get right into this.

I've tossed all 15 teams in the West into a random order.

We're going to go through one at a time.

We're going to get a three-minute timer for each team.

We've also got a little surprise from Jeff at the end of each of these team sections.

Jeff is going to give us his team all-star for each of these to give at least a

little bit of positivity, even for the teams that maybe haven't been super positive to start this season. So Jeff, let us get going. The timer starting in three, two, one. The Colorado Rapids are our first team, and I will go first on this. Please. I'm giving the Rapids a strong, Hardy A. One of these surprises of the year for me. You know, I didn't have a lot of belief that they could turn this group of players into a group that I think can threaten some of the better teams at MLS. And yet we've seen them do that. Now, they lost big to White Caps over the weekend and they were very much not in that game. But before that, just days earlier, they had had a short rest game against

LASC, and they were very much in that game and held LASC scoreless on the road at BMO. This is, I think, a good team. And I did not expect them to be a good team. I don't think they're a truly great team. I think there are still either time or pieces or maybe both away from that being true. But if you told me that the rapids were going to put in these level of performances against miami's and

lafc's and win other games as well, I would not have believed you when the season started. That's an A for me. And fair enough. And I think that what I'm, I gave it a B because I think I'm seeing a lot of the progress. But right now, there's still, the game model isn't really giving itself

room to get tight and to close games out. There's a lot of kind of back and forth in some of

these games. And you are right, Joe, against some more credible opponents lately, it's been

getting there. So maybe I'm being a little harsh on this curve here. But I'm still looking and

saying, Zach Stephan is underperforming massively. I think that he's been kind of bottom five in goal. Teams are generally still getting the 10th or 11th most chances against Colorado of any opponent right now in Major League Soccer. So the defense is still not funneling in a way that is going to prevent Zach Turner from beat. sorry Zach Turner. Ooh, Zach Stefan.

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