How we doing friends?

My mens league team is 0-3 to start the year. Ouch! We’re looking like the Earthquakes out there (Sorry Quakes fans😬) Enough about me, let’s get to it!

• 🔟 Match Week 10 Recap

• 🇺🇸 Yanks Abroad Update

• 🔢 Fun Stats

• 🧑‍⚖️ New Rules

• ⚽️ Goal of the Week

• 🤣 Meme of the Week

Match Week 10 Recap

The League’s Newest Rivalry

The Sporting Kansas City and St. Louis City rivalry is only in its second year but is becoming one of the league’s best and probably already the most physical. They played to a 3-3 draw that left St. Louis with a great road point. Although if it weren’t for sloppy defending St. Louis would’ve had all three points as they dominated the momentum all game.

Sporting KC continue to find ways to blow leads — they’ve extended their league lead in points dropped from a winning position to 14. 14!!!

Chicho’s Early MVP Bid

It’s almost like Chicago didn’t watch a single minute of Real Salt Lake film in preparation for this game. Chicho Arango had two goals and two assists to lift RSL to an easy 4-0 win on the road. Chicho has a league-leading 8 goals and 6 assists. He’s now firmly in the MVP race along with that guy Messi (who keeps doing Messi things).

This will likely be the 11 time in the past 12 years that Chicago misses the playoffs 😬 

Cali Clasico

It feels like every Galaxy game this year is going to be a shootout. The Galaxy looked like they were running away with this one after an early 3-0 lead in the 30th minute but San Jose fought back in the second half and took advantage of a Galaxy red card to at least make this interesting. Galaxy continue to score at will with a league-leading 2.33 goals per game.

San Jose have 3 points through 9 games and look destined for the Wooden Spoon. At least they have more points than my rec league team tho!

Yanks Abroad Update

Some good news and bad news from last weekend.

Let’s start with the bad.

Sergino Dest suffered a “serious knee injury” in training on Saturday and will likely be out for 9 months. If true he’ll miss Copa America 😢 

Matt Turner has been benched and the Men in Blazers had something to say about the goals scored on Nottingham Forest this weekend. But really, he needs to be getting minutes, we can’t have our first-choice keeper riding the bench in England.

Now to the good.

Haji Wright scored an FA Cup equalizer against Man United to send the game to extra time and PK’s, eventually losing to United. This would have been an insane upset.

Gio Reyna got his first two starts for Nottingham Forest and was rated as a top 3 player in both games.

Malik Tillman snagged a goal in their 6-0 win, complimented by none other than a Sergino Dest cross.

Joe Scally had an assist on Saturday, and may likely be the Dest replacement for Copa America.

Timothy Weahs assist puts Juventus into the Coppa Italia Final.

Fun Fact: USMNT players in the Top 5 European Leagues have 80 goal contributions in the 2023-24 season. 20 more than in any season in the last 20 years.

Fun Stats

This is wild — Puig has 20% more touches than the next closest player. It’s also interesting that as a defender Malte Amundsen has the second most touches. Columbus do like to build out of the back.

Nobody wants to talk about Messi every week, but his stats make it hard not to.

Puig is in the 99th percentile among MLS midfielders in passes attempted, progressive passes, and progressive carries. Just so dominant. Very deserving of his new contract extension.

New Rules

You may have noticed new rules this past weekend. MLS implemented 3 new competition initiatives that will affect the flow of the game a bit.

1. Off-field treatment - If a player with an injury remains on the ground for more than 15 seconds the referee will waive on the medical crew and the player will have to leave the field for 2 minutes.

2. Timed Substitutions - A substituted player is required to leave the field in 10 seconds. Failure to exit in 10 seconds will require the incoming player to hold for 1 minute before entering making his team play down a man for that time. No more time wasting!

3. In stadium VAR Announcements - VAR announcements will be explained by the ref in stadium and broadcast to viewers at home. I love this one. I went to the Red Bulls game the other week and had no idea what was happening with VAR.

Goal of the Week

So many bangers this week but this in-the-air-behind-the-back-side-footed-nutmeg (idk what else to call it 🤷‍♂️) might be one of the craziest goals we’ve seen in a while.

Meme of the Week

Watch it. It’s good.

Quick Hits

• Inter Miami midfielder Diego Gomez will be out 6 weeks with an ankle injury (Link)

• Apple is close to securing streaming rights for the 2025 Club World Cup (Link)

• Former MLS star Tajon Buchanon wins Serie A with Inter Milan (Link)

• Olivier Giroud officially signs with LAFC (Link)

• FC Cincinnati sign Kevin Kelsy on loan from Shakhtar (Link)

See ya next week, folks 🫡