Finally! Live players. On a real pitch. Wearing those beautiful grey LAFC practice kits! It’s Episode 96, and, after about 8 weeks, we finally get to talk about… practice!
It may only be a few players at a time, and they may not be able to share a ball or a bottle of water, let alone the workout room, but this week, LAFC’s Training Facility opened for the first time in two months. Trickling through the parking lot was Carlos Vela, Diego Rossi, and even a healthy Bradley Wright-Phillips. As Mohamed El-Munir so rightly put it, “This is better than nothing.”
In addition to practice, Episode 96 naturally got us thinking about the year that was ’96. Jordan’s Bulls, GoldenEye on N64, Bill Clinton elected president, and… the Macarena? History will judge us harshly for that one. We ask the question, “What if Kobe went to his hometown Sixers in the 1996 NBA Draft and not to L.A.?”
The Defenders also cover the Mark-Anthony Kaye vs. Lee Nguyen FIFA20 “friendly”, though nobody told Lee to play nice. A 6-1 thrashing by the USMNT over MAK’s Canada set the tone for a rough 3-game outing for our beloved Canadian midfielder. We miss you, Lee, but we’ve got nothing but love for Kaye!
Filly and the Scarf are keeping a close eye on the Bundesliga and the KBO, hoping beyond hope that these first tests of the “new normal” go off without a hitch. While we would have loved to have taken over San Jose today, seeing our Black and Gold friends healthy and safe takes precedence.
Episode 96 has a little bit of everything and everyone. Why are we following a team in K-League soccer? What’s Scarf’s favorite Bundesliga team? What are Filly’s words of wisdom at the end of the episode? Did the boys really find a way to bring up the Canadian Tuxedo yet again? And what the heck is the “Wooden Spoon Award”? You’ll have to listen to the entire episode to find out! And for the first time, stick around AFTER the boys sign off for a bit of behind the scenes banter between Scarf and Panda. Poor, poor Filly. Somewhere, Chris Kirkpatrick is smiling… with his soul patch.