Dummy: Interviews with smart people about soccer

I grew up in Tampa and played 11-a-side club soccer very seriously from as early as I can remember to age 18, which is also when I moved away. When I moved back last year, I started playing at a place called Cinco Soccer, which has outdoor turf fields designed for five-a-side soccer with a futsal ball. Now, I had played small-sided soccer on turf when I lived in New York, and I’ve played futsal on hardwood basketball courts in lots of places, but Cinco married these two things in a really interesting way. (Plus, it has a liquor license, so I can get a $2 beer after the game.) Today on Dummy I speak with Keith Rados, who built Cinco from scratch, about what it's like to run the place and why he thinks it has become so popular in the Tampa soccer scene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Dennie Wendt and David Peace discuss his masterpiece, Red or Dead—the first selection of the Howler Book Club. We’ve published several essays about the book on the website. • Join the Dummy email list. • Dummy is supported by Futchi. Get $20 off a Futchi Rebounder with the promo code HOWLER. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First, we catch up with Clint Irwin, starting goalkeeper for Toronto FC ahead of Saturday’s MLS Cup final, aka the Biggest Game of His Life. Then, we hop back to the summer of 2015, when George was passing through Denver and dropped in on the Colorado Rapids starting goalkeeper, Clint Irwin. Same guy! In that interview, Clint tells his amazing story of bouncing around the lower leagues of American and Canadian soccer before finally making it in MLS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Check out this incredible, injury-time equalizer bicycle kick scored by a goalkeeper. • Join the Dummy email list. • Dummy is supported by Futchi. Get $20 off a Futchi Rebounder with the promo code HOWLER. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simon Evans: “Jurgen Klinsmann, a lone revolutionary in conservative U.S. soccer culture” • Watch the Puskas Award nominees and then vote for the that one is most embarrassing for the defending team in this week’s poll. • Join the Dummy email list • Our sponsor this week is Futchi. Get $20 off a Futchi Rebounder with the promo code HOWLER. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bobby and George talk about a calamitous few days for the U.S. men’s national team. What went wrong against Costa Rica. Can it be fixed? Could Bruce Arena take over? And does that open the door for Landon Donovan’s return (OMG). Then Dennie Wendt joins to introduce Red or Dead by David Peace, the Howler Book Club’s first selection. Buy Red or Dead Bobby Warshaw argues that Jurgen is not fit to coach the USMNT Dennie Wendt on loving Red or Dead This week’s poll: is it okay to wear the jersey of a player who is younger than you are? Our sponsor this week is Futchi. Get $20 off a Futchi set with the promo code HOWLER. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The phenomenon of a single away fan traveling to support his team. Mike Goodman on squad lifecycles and how the best teams manage their rosters to stay competitive every season. David Goldblatt makes an announcement and the decade of soccer since he wrote The Ball Is Round. Check out the Goalmouth and the Double Pivot, two other fine soccer podcasts. Sign up for emails about Dummy here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury announced that they would be leaving the NASL and joining the USL, a move from the U.S. second to third division. Peter Wilt comes back to explain what this means. Take part in our annual Full Kit Wanker contest and win a jersey from SoccerPro: http://fifa.wtf/2eeCbjK David Dilley on the way great games follow the same narrative conventions as great art: http://fifa.wtf/2eesaU0 Join the Dummy email list: http://fifa.wtf/2eM9iAq No poll this week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We don’t know many of the details about why Darlington Nagbe declined to play for the U.S. national team in the last two friendlies, but Will Parchman and Bobby Warshaw join to discuss what we do know, and we try to answer the big questions: why do some players seem to love Jurgen Klinsmann while others fall out of favor and never get another chance? Is there ever a good reason to just shrug off a call-up? Bobby and Will agree that the U.S. needs a player with Nagbe’s unique abilities; what does the U.S. midfield look like for the foreseeable future without him? This week’s poll—what is your all-time favorite soccer jersey? http://fifa.wtf/2eM70B6 Matt Pyzdrowski’s excellent piece on Marc André ter Stegen: http://fifa.wtf/2eM7bwg Join the Dummy email list: http://fifa.wtf/2eM9iAq ***Those of you who, like George, use Pocket Casts to listen to podcasts might have seen a couple of recent episodes download multiple times this week. We are changing all of Howler’s podcasts over to a new host, and this appears to be a bug specific to Pocket Casts. We apologize for the inconvenience!*** Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Click here to take this week’s Dummy poll: http://fifa.wtf/2dTD4R1 In the past couple of years, we’ve seen some pretty surprising cities markets explode in frenzy of soccer love: Kansas City, Sacramento, and now Cincinnati, where more than 30,000 people showed up earlier this month for a USL playoff game. Today on Dummy, Peter Wilt looks at the demographic data and predicts what’s next. The answers may surprise you. (Omaha? Seriously?)  Peter’s story for Howler: http://fifa.wtf/2dTCZfQ Over the past 30 years, Peter has launched and run several professional soccer clubs, including the Chicago Fire and Indy Eleven, and he’s known just as much for paying careful attention to the communities where he’s building loyalty and support as he is for creating winning teams—though he has done that too, most notably in Chicago with Bob Bradley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s poll: What is your current first choice center back pairing for the U.S. men? Give your answer here: http://fifa.wtf/2dTpgZ9 Alexi Lalas became the face of the U.S. men’s national team during a breakout period for the game in this country. His performance at the ’94 World Cup and his finely tuned public image catapulted him to stardom—and he credits his infatuation with the world of rock music for the way he was able to turn opportunity into celebrity. We discuss his many soccer jobs, from player to team executive to pundit, and why he chose to finish his college degree decades after leaving Rutgers early; his complex relationship with Bora Milutinovic, the coach of that ’94 team; what it was like to play in Italy when the Serie A was the undisputed top league in the world; what went wrong at the ’98 World Cup; and the really important stuff, like the difference between soccer and rock groupies. If you can’t stand him because he plays the provocateur on TV—and we do talk about his many Twitter haters—this interview will make you see him in a new way. And if you’re fascinated by his quintessentially American story, not to mention the lore of the the ’94 World Cup, then you absolutely cannot miss this conversation.                                                                                                                 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s election season, so we talk polling. Then, 1v1 with Sean Johnson. As a teenager, the Chicago Fire and USMNT goalkeeper slept through his ODP regional tryout (oops!), and his discovery by then-U-20 coach Thomas Rongen was basically a happy accident. Johnson was a six-foot-four center playing against seven-footers in high school basketball. He won a Lamborghini for a year. And if he wasn’t a professional soccer player, he says he would be an accountant—so we try to figure out what those two professions have in common. Take George’s one-question poll: http://fifa.wtf/2dz6VjX Learn more about (and sign up for) The Goalmouth: http://fifa.wtf/2dz9qTb                                                                                                                 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most people know Florentino Pérez as the rich dude who likes to overspend on soccer players so his club, Real Madrid, can win lots of trophies. And that’s true, but his story and his relationship with the players and fans of Real Madrid is a lot more interesting than that. Dermot Corrigan wrote a massive profile of the two-time Madrid president for the latest issue of Howler, and he joins to discuss what drives one of the most powerful men in the world of soccer—and the whole entertainment industry, for that matter. Dummy listeners can now get 10% off a subscription to Howler Magazine (perhaps you’ve heard of it). Go to shop.howlermagazine.com and enter the code DUMMYSAVES. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Dummy we have a special guest. You might call him the most special guest we could possibly book. In fact, he might even say that about himself. José Mourinho talks about the methods he uses to revamp a club when he takes over as manager--in this case, Manchester United. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone except Bobby, that is—in fact, he really wants George to calm down. GQ and BW discuss a U.S. national team in transition: some older faces fading away and the newer ones replacing them. IMPORTANT NOTE: Something very, very strange happened to the audio in the app we used to record this episode, and George’s side of the tape started to speed up from the 28th-minute mark. Rest assured, he's back to normal for Tiki Talka. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices