Hello,

Hello,

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

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and on today's episode, it's MLS update time.

We'll be doing our team-by-team previews next week, but for now we're grading the biggest and best moves from the wildest offseason in MLS history.

Here to do so, I'm joined by The Man with all the MLS answers.

It's Joe Lowry.

Hello, Joe.

Hey, Taylor, I am stoked for this.

It is wonderful to be back talking MLS on this show, which we are going to do plenty more of

over the next, I don't know, however long the MLS season is until December and then until

the end of time.

That's kind of what it feels like covering MLS. This has been, and you said it there, I do really think this has been the craziest offseason in MLS history. Messi comes midseason. I believe David Beckham comes midseason, so those are not real concerns for this conversation. There have been so many eight figure moves. There have been so many DPs coming in and out. This has been a wild January and I guess even a little bit earlier after the MLS season ended. Yeah, let's take into some of this stuff. I'm excited to do so. Joe, I'm also excited to talk more MLS. It's good to have MLS back. I know our MLS stands in the Discord and my friends who are MLS loyalists are very excited for preseason and nervous about the roster builds such as they are.

We should note, as I said in the intro, we're doing the team by team previews next week.

We're going to be doing some specific predicting.

Joe, how are your previews going so far?

I feel good about it.

I've been digging into a bunch of these teams for backhield anyway and some stuff

that'll come out next week. So I feel like my foundation is solid. The VSP part is where I feel like we've really ratcheted up the pressure. We're going to talk major offseason moves. We'll talk tactics. We'll talk any other relevant storylines around these teams. And then we'll do some predicting for the season, not necessarily where they'll finish in the standing. although we might do some of that too, who knows. But yeah, I feel like over the last few major tournaments and seasons we've done, the VSP debates get more and more hotly contested about what is and what isn't a VSP, mostly directed towards you, Ryan, you know who you are. You know, you know what's up. And I want to make sure that I'm mine are above board. So we're going

through an intense review process, Taylor. I appreciate the review. I appreciate that dedication to detail. Joe, and then each week we're going to be talking MLS as we have in seasons past. But now we've got weekend review. We've got USM&T update. Now we've got MLS update. We're sort of locking in a schedule here at Total Soccer Show.

Yeah, I'm excited.

We're going to be doing MLS discussion every Tuesday as the plan throughout the season during international windows and things like that. There's a high likelihood that some of that stuff will shift slightly. But that will be the regular Tuesday show. We'll be looking back at some of the weekend talking about big stories, talking about the things that are interesting to us around MLS, likely doing some interviews and things like that as well. So I am, I'm stoked. There's honestly nothing I enjoy more in my job than talking about MLS. I think it's an interesting league. I think there are interesting storylines. I think the macro story of the league is fascinating as well. So we're going to dig into all of those things. Not totally unlike how we have in the past, but the show will look a little different. It'll be a little more structured in some ways than it has been before, and I am stoked. You don't like chaotic free flow? That doesn't do it for you? Oh, I like chaotic free flow, Taylor. Don't you get me wrong. Joe's enthusiasm rankings will be coming back. If it's not, I'm going to riot.

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