When will your team be a contender: now, sprint season, or new calendar? | MLS Update

Taylor Rockwell (0:21)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and I'm excited to be with you today for what could be an incredibly long episode. We'll see how it goes, because we're talking MLS teams. Are they a competitor for this season, for the sprint season, for next season? All of the above, none of the above. We'll soon find out to break it all down and do the majority of the heavy lifting. I've got two fine friends, my usual fine friends on a Tuesday. Joe Lowry, how are you, my friend?

Joseph Lowery (0:50)

Taylor, I'm great. You know, it's a special episode when we have to be threatened, Jeff and I, with you bringing out the timer. And I think this is very much in that category. I'm stoked, man. I think this is the perfect time to do something like this, where we're evaluating, credit to Jeff for the idea, evaluating when these teams could realistically have their trophy window open, right? Is it now? Is it later? Is it much later? Because we just got out of the transfer window. And so like it or not, basically, the team that you see before you, maybe outside of a couple of cases, when it comes to free agent, is basically the team you're going to get for the rest of the season. Then there'll be a window before the sprint, et cetera, et cetera. But still, this is the time where we have the most information about the most number of teams all at once, and it makes sense to go big picture.

Taylor Rockwell (1:27)

And Jeff Rooter, a man who moved house this weekend and has claimed that he watched some soccer and is ready to talk about all of the soccer. How are we doing, Jeff? Good, same rules, thankfully.

It's always good to check in on a game and realize they're still doing mostly the same stuff. Same rules. So, yeah.

Joseph Lowery (1:44)

They were begging to change it, Jeff, while you were gone, but Taylor and I in particular, we stood up, right, Taylor? And we said, no, not while Jeff is moving. You can do it later when Jeff's around to protest with us. But you can't do it right now.

Taylor Rockwell (1:55)

This is it. That's the rule. You're welcome. And it wasn't a threat to start a timer, just to be clear. It was more so guide rails for myself because I will end up asking like nine follow-ups and we'll be in like segment three and still on Chicago if I don't rein myself in. So, we're going to try to move through a little bit faster. I will set a timer in case we need to utilize it. But as I said, we're going to go through, we're going to talk about each team to varying lengths and discuss if they are, as I said, a competitor for right now for the Cup for the Shield, this season for the sprint season, or for the first year of the new schedule. Joe Lowry, get us started with Atlanta United if you would.

Joseph Lowery (2:33)

I think this team is still a little bit away. I don't think they're realistically a contender for anything this season. The sprint season might even be a little bit too soon for them. I have gone with the first season of the new schedule. So basically in one year from now, when that new calendar starts, basically 10 months or so from now, I think Atlanta United could be in position to challenge. I think this is pretty good news for Atlanta, to be honest, they drew into Miami 2-2 over the weekend. We saw two important debuts from them. We saw Brielle Mbolo debut up top as the nine, draws a yellow card in the first half, draws a penalty that he scores in the second half to equalize late on in Miami. And we also saw the debut of U-22 initiative midfielder, Mauricio Amaro, who came in from Uruguay earlier in the window. He looked very good as their single pivot, deepest lying number six. His comfort on the ball caught me off guard a little bit. He looked very poised in tight spots and then super rangy, which is already what I expected. His ability to cover ground and win the ball looked there.

If those two guys are what they looked like they might be over the weekend, and they're able to do a little bit of chopping and changing across the midfield, I think in particular the other DP spots over the next two transfer windows, I think this Atlanta United team could finally, once again, be something serious.