Hello,

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

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

I am still losing my voice.

We've got MLS playoffs to discuss the third legs of the second round that is really the first round are in the books.

On to the third round, which is really the second round in which they play one game instead of three.

After the international break, 11 days from now. It's going to be great. Joe Lowry, I think I've gotten all the snark out of my system. I am excited to be here because some of these games were nuts, lots of cards, lots of goals, some very good goals too. Did you enjoy the third legs of the second round that is really the first round? Okay, now I've got all the snark out of my system. I did very much enjoy these games. I think there was an all-time, all-time MLS sort of game, not just playoff game in this bunch that we're going to talk about. Can I do a little snark for just a second? Because I've been the defendant of the playoff format, and I'm not going to argue against myself in the past here. I do still think that the round one best of three is a lot of fun. Agreed. I had a first round takeaways piece go up along with Seza Hernandez for ESPN earlier this week. And honestly, one of the things that I highlighted in that piece is how nonsensical the scheduling of this format was in round one.

I'm going to say this, then I'm going to be done, and I can talk about soccer the rest of the show. Why on the opening weekend, did we not have any Saturday games? I talked about that already. Why did it go Friday to Sunday to Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday? Why did we have four different teams on three days rest and two teams on seven days rest? None of how they actually scheduled the first round games made any sense whatsoever.

It made it difficult for the neutral to actually

understand what the cadence of the postseason is in a narrative series where it should be easy

to set up narratives and rhythm for the neutral viewer. Absolutely mind-boggling stuff from MLS

and how they scheduled these games. I'm yet to hear a coherent explanation for why this is the way that it was. I still had a great time. I just wish that more people could have had a great time watching these games too, but I fear people didn't really know when the games were. If you haven't heard a very coherent explanation, what is the most coherent explanation you've heard? Why wouldn't you have a game on Saturday night? The Discord was theorizing that it had something to do with Fox because these games, a lot of them anyway, were airing on FS1 during the postseason, so they're on Apple TV, but then also on FS1, and that maybe Fox had those slots booked for something else. I'm not totally sure that I buy that, but I don't know. I really don't know what was going on here. All that said, I had a great time watching these games. Like they were tons of fun. We had goals on goals on goals. We had a lot of good teams advancing. We had some narrative drama. I had a great time. Just some reasons I'm still scratching my head too. So Joe had a great time. I'm going to guess Jeff had the most great time. Jeff has the euphoria died down. Are you naming all potential future children, Dane, Saint, or Claire? Was that already the case?

Well, I got a vasectomy in 2021, so probably not. Yeah. Snips dad, baby, get that undone? You're good to go. It's, yeah, no. I could have had a thousand guesses, one thousand and one guesses. And I never could have guessed, guess what Jeff was going to lead with on today's show. I wasn't really, I was maybe thinking there'd be a yes and I wasn't ready for no vasectomy. That's a, that's a new, that's a new version of improv that I'm used. It's from the Michael Scott School of Improv, but just in a very different progressive way. No, I think, look, I mean, it was cool to see for Minnesota, right? And it was, I was in the press box for those two games as well. And Joe, like, completely agree on the scheduling specific snafus. I laid all those out before the playoffs on five sides as well. And it just, it doesn't make any sense when you look at it from the outside, how you want to space them out this way.

I think that the FS1 theory holds credence, though, when you look at which games ended up on weird days. But when you look at like the vibes in Minnesota, this is one of those games that like turns people into lifelong fans, right? Like it's one of those where I think that a lot of people in Portland really fell for the double doink.

Even if it wasn't necessarily like MLS Cup. I think that was a moment that got people really excited a decade ago. And I think it can have a similar effect on kind of neutral Minnesota sports fans who went into the series hearing, hey, Minnesota always loses against Seattle in this sport. And then suddenly, oh, they won in very dramatic fashion.

Like, that's, that's one that's, uh, it's going to live in the memory banks for quite some time.

And having been there, it was, you know, as, as exciting of a game as I've been to since

MLS Cup 22. It was better than 23 in terms of just like the octane and no, no disrespect

to the people of Columbusumbus but you had

that thing a little more comfortable than this game ever was we'll talk about it more i think it's a

segment two topic this game that we're alluding to but oh it's a blessing this sport it really is

that game was amazing that shootout was amazing like four different times i was certain I knew what was going to happen, certain someone

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