Hello, hello, everybody and welcome to the Total Soccer Show. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and I'm very excited today to be joined by Joe Lowry.

Joe Lowry, it's a double day of recording. It's a double recording day. That's the word I was looking for.

We did our weekend review at some length. I enjoyed that one. But I spent a lot of my evening last night trying to catch up on all of the Major League Soccer results because I knew we were recording this one today. It was a weekend, Mr. Lowry. It was. It was a really, really good weekend of MLS action. If folks have already made it close to the end of weekend review, they'll know that I tease that. But we had some sweeps. We had some crazy history making sorts of upsets. We had some spit from Hector Herrera. I guess that's notable too. It was a really great set of games. I can't tell you how much more I enjoyed having just Friday, Saturday, Saturday,

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday for the slate. It makes talking about them so much simpler. It made,

I thought, each match day more fun. I didn't feel like the games got buried on Monday night and

Tuesday night in the way that they did for the game ones. I know that MLS was trying to skirt around

college football in the NFL, but were they really? Because they only tried to do it for the first set of games and they didn't for this set. I don't know. Either way, I'm happy camper because there was some good stuff. There was. I personally really enjoy the later night games for Major League Soccer, because especially if you've been watching football, you've been watching other sports, you've been catching up on your maybe weekend review research, it's nice to them be like, oh, it's 9 p.m. And there's still another game to go. I can just watch that one and kind of enjoy it instead of feeling like I have to catch up on it the morning after. So for me, I've enjoyed some of the scheduling. I've enjoyed a lot of the results because there were some very surprising ones, as you said, some sweeps, some upsets, some more exactly what we expected type of results.

Joe, I want to start with the big one.

Maybe not the big one in terms of total soccer show, but the big one in terms of Major League Soccer executives, who I'm assuming are happy that they get another game of

Inter Miami versus Atlanta, but also maybe terrified that Atlanta could end up winning this

whole thing?

Yep.

I think that pretty much describes the feeling inside of MLS HQ and Apple HQ.

Well, not Apple HQ.

Apple HQ doesn't care about this, but whatever Apple subdivision is responsible for...

Apple HQ is probably somewhat confident that playoffs might be happening. They're too busy working on, Taylor, what's that, like purposeful obsolescence? What's that term? Oh, planned obsolescence? Yeah, they're too busy crafting that to make my brain explode with rage. Which I know you also are not a fan of. No one should be a fan of that. But Apple, we see you. we're aware of what you're doing and we have no power to stop you. Anyway, Atlanta United, get a 2-1 win in the second leg of this series against Inter Miami. That means they will go to a third game, which is nice for Apple and MLS because they get messy one more time at least. Not so nice because Atlanta United could do this whole thing. The first game of

this series was the Brad Guzan game for Atlanta United. They still lost that match. Miami were the better team. Guzanne stood on his head and it still wasn't enough. Then they go back to the Benz and the Benz was rocking. Taylor, Mercedes-Benz was so loud. I've been in that stadium, you've been in that stadium, I was there this past summer for USA Panama. And it was so loud when

Flor and Balligan put the ball in the back of the net in that game for the USMNT. It was so much louder. Even on my TV, I feel like it was so much louder for Atlanta United when John De Silva scores that 94th minute winner to force a game three for Atlanta United. It felt like 2018. And I think that might have actually even been when you were there, Taylor. That was MLS Cup 2018. And Atlanta United would win that whole thing with Tata Martino on the sidelines. It was rocking. It was an incredible atmosphere and a reminder of how fun it is when Atlanta United are fun for Major League Soccer. And they were fun in this game.

They weren't perfect.

They go behind in the first half.

Brad Guzan makes just an absurd mistake.

I don't think it was a foul as Redondo kind of feints towards him.

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