Is a new top-spending club emerging? Plus: Embolo to Atlanta! | MLS Update

**Taylor Rockwell** (0:21)
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and it is lovely to be back to Talking Major League Soccer with You Fine Folks, and I have two fine folks to do that with me, the first, Joe Lowry, in front of a lovely framed picture. Joe, you're classing up the joint.

**Joseph Lowery** (0:36)
Oh, you know, artwork follows me wherever I go. I'm a classic art connoisseur. What can I say? I've attended many an auction. None of that is true, but there is a lovely painting behind me while I'm on vacation, and that's all I have to say. Thanks, Taylor.

**Taylor Rockwell** (0:50)
Have you ever attended an auction of any kind?

**Joseph Lowery** (0:54)
I don't think so. Do you have any questions on the show so far? No, I don't think so. I would like to attend an auction. It feels like the kind of thing that I bring my hand-held monocle to. Maybe Ryan will let me borrow his or something like that because I don't actually own one. Maybe I wear some sort of top hat. Am I just going to dress up like the Monopoly man? I think that's what I'm going to do.
Or Mr. Peanuts.

**Taylor Rockwell** (1:09)
That's what I'm getting from you.

**Joseph Lowery** (1:11)
Yeah, you might be right about that. I had two spoonfuls of peanut butter ice cream last night. Peanut butter is on the brain, man.

**Taylor Rockwell** (1:18)
I'm happy for you. I have so many questions. Two spoonfuls? That's unacceptable. I'm going to let you think about how you should have just had a bowl.

**Joseph Lowery** (1:24)
If it was someone else's ice cream, I had my own ice cream that was not peanut butter flavored.

**Taylor Rockwell** (1:28)
Okay, now it all makes sense. Was it you and Ryan Bailey?

**Joseph Lowery** (1:31)
Yeah, it was. We were trading monocles. Yep, it was beautiful.

**Taylor Rockwell** (1:35)
Jeff Rooter, have you ever attended an auction slash stolen someone's ice cream slash worn a monocle? Two out of three ain't bad.

**Joseph Lowery** (1:42)
Wow.

**Taylor Rockwell** (1:44)
Silent auctions are fun. Those are really good low stakes. You're just supporting a cause. I accidentally won a Vladimir Guerrero jersey on the World Cup Tour because I was trying to start a silent auction board off and I saw this autographed Angel's Vlad Guerrero jersey, but I've been drawn over by a Magic Johnson jersey. Then I get the email, oops, you won the Vlad jersey, but then you go to check out and there's the Magic jersey. And I'm like, hey, can I just have that instead? And they said, yes. So thank you to LA Children's Hospital folk for just saying, yeah, we know you probably didn't want the Vlad Guerrero jersey. Here's some Magic Johnson autograph instead. Silent auctions, they're fun. Why was the Magic Johnson jersey still available? And did you just steal it from someone, is that actually what happened? So it's funny, I guess I kind of stole it because like the bidding was like 10, 15 bids deep, but the winner didn't collect. So they reset it to the original listing price, which was under 150 bucks.
Massive. Yeah. All right. I guess start attending more silent auctions. Joe, get our models ready.

**Joseph Lowery** (2:42)
All I heard is silent auction equals free stuff.

**Taylor Rockwell** (2:45)
Boom.

**Joseph Lowery** (2:45)
I don't know why I haven't been doing this for decades, frankly.

**Taylor Rockwell** (2:49)
Well, some not-free things have been happening in the city of Kansas City. Should we talk Sporting KC for a moment? They have been doing some things. So new owner, Peter Maluk, acquires 80 percent ownership in January, and money is being spent, Jeff Rooter. Money is being spent. I think SKC fans were trying to figure out if they spent more money this summer than they did in the entirety of Peter Vermeer's tenure as manager, and it seems to be that that is maybe the case.
Especially if they can drop 25 mil on Fernandez Mercow by the end of this window, then they will very much clear that. It's fascinating to watch Kansas City this season. They are going through what feels like what we used to know as the MLS expansion timeline during a season when they were a founding member of the league. This is an incredibly delayed. Maybe they just missed out. Maybe they realized that there was so much excitement, we talked about all these old MLS clubs that worry, how do you keep up with the new kids, and they all come in and they get their allocation money boosts, and they get their designated players signing unveilings, and we've just been playing soccer the whole time. Why don't we just strip this thing down to the bolts and try again? I don't know. It's crazy to watch this. But they lost to Atlanta too, right? Or tied Atlanta?