Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to MLS Assist, a podcast created to give insight into the tactical side of major league soccer.

I'm your host, Joe Lowry, and I'm joined by my co-host, Jordan Angelie.

Jordan, we've got a light at the end of the tunnel.

MLS is coming back.

How are you?

Oh, my gosh.

Isn't that amazing?

You say that and I have a big smile on my face. Yeah, I'm good. I'm excited to, you know, we're getting more and more soccer for sure as far as sports go. Live soccer has been the biggest, I would say, sport to come back all over the world. And it's nice that it's going to start coming back here in the U.S. too. 100% last week. On Wednesday of last week, MLS announced that they're really cleverly named MLS's back tournament. We'll start on July 8th, which is definitely welcome news for us. I think we talked about this last week when the move was reported that this tournament in Orlando was going to be starting up. And now it's official because of that upcoming tournament, today's episode where you and I are going through 10 American MLS players who are ready to make the move to Europe, this show is going to be our last non-MLS's back related show for a while. Right. But I think our listeners need to trust us. We've got some pretty exciting new things planned for our coverage of that actual tournament that we'll make sure to get out to them as July gets a little bit closer. Yeah, I like that. You're just teasing him a little bit. You threw that line out there. You guys are going to have to stay tuned. And I feel bad. I feel bad, but I think it's wise to wait just a little bit. And I will give a sneak peek of what we're doing. So next week, we're going to go

through the tournament format. We're going to go back and forth with our impressions of the draw, talk about some matchups that we're interested in or some things that we think are particularly interesting tactically and on the field. We might talk about the style of play that we could see from a lot of these teams in the tournament and the potential for some regression in terms of how these teams play.

And then hopefully,

I think you and I both would like

to take a few listener questions on that show. So if you've got any tactics-based things that you guys are curious about, you can find us on Twitter at MLS AssistPod. Let us know and we'll do our absolute best to answer the best ones on the show. Yeah, I think so. I think that's a great way to go because we've had

some good listener questions in previous episodes. And so we figured before we get back into playing,

might as well see what you guys have to say and what you're thinking about. We've had some

fantastic questions. And I'm sure that's going to continue over the next couple of weeks as we get

prepared for this tournament. As excited, Jordan, as I am, and I'm sure as's going to continue over the next couple of weeks as we get prepared for this tournament. As excited, Jordan, as I am and I'm sure as you are, to get actual MLS games back. We're not quite there yet. Today we've got a whole slew of promising young Americans to talk about, sort of similar to last week's format, right? Last week we analyzed 10 non-American MLS players who we think are ready to make the jump to Europe to further their careers and advance MLS as far as their perception around the world. Today we're pretty much following the same format, right? It's going to be the same setup. We've got 10 American guys. We're going to go back and forth on them. Just to give a quick refresh of the rules, players must be with an MLS club for at least one year. They can't be on loan. they've got to be under 26 years old and we've got the LASC rule, which I think for the American version,

we should name the FC Dallas rule. We didn't talk about that, but that's just something I thought of, which means that no more than two players from any one team can be on our list. The only rule that's different is just the domestic player rule. So last week, they couldn't be American this

week. They have to. Unfortunately, and this was 100% my bad, Jordan, because of how these rules

were constructed, there's one guy who we unintentionally wrote out of contention to be on either

one of these lists. And that's Mark Anthony Kay. You and I talked about it earlier this week.

That was my bad. I was constructing the format of these last couple of shows. And unintentionally did not give Mark Anthony Kay a shout out last week. And he's Canadian, so he can't be on this week's show either. So I think LASC fans got enough content last week. But just to get that out there, that is my mistake. And I'm sorry to Mark Anthony Kay. Yeah. And we feel like that list wouldn't be actually fulfilled if he wasn't on there, right? Right. Exactly. And we had talked about him and then he didn't even make it on our honorable mention when we talked about LASC. So it's just funny how that kind of worked out. But yeah, here's our apology. And he is on that list. There you go. As an honorable mention. Retroactively,

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