Hello,

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

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and we've got an MLS Cup final to preview.

It's Miami hosting Vancouver, and it's a battle of designated players, quality squad members, debutante managers.

What a time to be alive to help paint the picture of how we got to this point in the season, I'm joined by two fine friends. Up first, it's a man who knows that if you're going to have a super sub, it's nice if it's Ryan Gould. It's Joe Lowry. Hello, Joe. That's a fundamental principle of life, I think. I don't think you could find a person on the street that once you explain the situation to them in detail. So Ryan Gould, they called him the Scottish Messi, eventually Vancouver. They needed a 10 for years. They went out and signed him. Oh, by the way, the 10 is an attacking midfielder, playmaker type. They signed him. They brought him into the team. He was the working man's MVP. He gets injured. now all of a sudden he's back healthy enough to play 30 minutes off the bench. Who wouldn't want that guy? Every single person on the street.

Maybe except for British people, I guess, I don't know. We won't count them. They would say, yes, I want that. Taylor, fundamental life principle. Nailed it. So do we have the Scottish messy versus the Argentine messy, or is it just the Scottish messy versus messy? Yeah, I think just a Scottish Messy versus messy until Brendan Arrington pops out and we've got the Medford messy, you know, which really I think the takeaway here is we should just stop calling people, fill in the blank place name, messy. That's on me. All right. Can we still call him Lienel Messi or is it just messy from now on? Yeah, just messy. Yeah, he is a victim of

the rule. All right. A man who is not a mononym running out the crew today as ever, a man who sneegally did score against NYCFC this past weekend, but Miami put in so many that no one seemed to notice. It's Jeff Ruder. Hello, Jeff. Yeah, I mean, and it's hard too, but like, you run around, you do your best, you make that good off ball run, you get that tap in,

and then no one cares, man.

Everyone's running over, and I mean, and it's hard, too, but like, you run around, you do your best, you make that good off ball run, you get that tap in, and then no one cares, man. Everyone's running over, and I'm not wearing pink. That's the hard part, too. I wore the wrong shirt, and, you know, it's embarrassing, but certainly thereafter. Yeah. But the goal call, I will say, the call to my goal had five different product placements for Apple products, which is now a hallmark of the coverage. And just blessed. So, thanks for insosciated.

Right. Like, there is one, I'm sorry, there was one goal call where it was like, Javier Marsurano, that notification on his watch. It was the loud decibel setting, whatever. And then it cut to his watch and it's not an Apple watch. It is a different brand of watch.

And it was just like, oh. Just AI superimposed. They're just putting an Apple Watch in place. Hovering over it. Like the graphics behind the goal. Yeah, perfect. Perfect. They'll get that. Do both of you have Apple watches? I actually do. Well, on the subject of product placement? I do. Yeah. I do not.

Okay.

I was just curious,

what is the least helpful time you've gotten

one of those loud noise settings? I get them when one of my daughters loses their minds. That's always a fun one. And I guess Apple, I know. I'm aware. I'm in the trenches. Yeah, it was like, thank you, Apple, for telling me that my two-year-old screaming one inch from my face is loud. My wringing ears and hurting brain also told me that. Jeff, can you relate? No? The alternative I've got for you is driving in a quiet car alone with my window down and my arm over the side of it. And if there's no music playing, it'll still say, oh, it's too loud, quiet, quiet. And I'm just like, I'm trying to relax. And now you're telling me. Wind of the ocean? Apparently I had it in the ocean and it went off. Who knew that the ocean was that loud? Anyway, we're not here to talk about decibels and watches and product placement. Maybe we should be. Instead, we're here to talk about the 2025 MLS Cup final and previewing it accordingly.

We're going to try to take a lengthier look.

We will get into some of the tactics,

some of the individual matchups later on in the show.

But I always think when we come to the end of the season,

it's nice to look back and kind of figure out how these teams got to this point,

how they were kind of structured to begin with,

how they grew along the way,

...