Annual awards, an appeal, and the USMNT's relationship with animals
Courtroom drama and emojis in the Discord, as well.
Welcome to the Scuffed Newsletter, a weekly email guide to the U.S. men's national soccer team. Sign up free to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week we dole out a bunch of awards for 2021, Watke drills down on the USMNT’s relationship with the animal kingdom, and offer a brief primer on the Scuffed Discord emoji lexicon.
The 2021 Scuffed Awards
Happy New Year! Here is the full list of recipients of the 2021 Scuffed Awards.
Player of the Year: Weston McKennie
Most Inscrutable Player: Sergiño Dest
Littlest Brother: Brenden Aaronson
Best Sh-thousing (Connivance Category): Kellyn Acosta
Best Sh-thousing (Unnerving Category): Gio Reyna
Biggest Change in Belz’s Opinion: Sebastian Lletget
Most Unexpected Moment (Honorable Mention): Man Overboard
Most Unexpected Moment (1st Place): The Stretcher Children
Biggest Snub: (tie) Luca de la Torre and Duane Holmes
Most Overrated Player: Brenden Aaronson
Most Improved Player: Brenden Aaronson
Biggest Disappointment (Honorable Mention): Jesse Marsh’s firing
Biggest Disappointment (1st Place): the Olympic qualifying disaster
Dad of the Year: John “Airborne69” McKennie
Best goal for country: Sergiño Dest’s top bins rope vs Costa Rica
Best goal for club: Daryl Dike’s thunderbolt vs Birmingham City
Coach of the Year: Gregg Berhalter
Worst Coach of the Year: Jason Kreis
If you want to hear the rationale for each award, please listen to our latest episode and skip to the 19:25 mark, which is when the awards start.
It’s been quiet this week on the USMNT front, so I don’t have much to say other than this: As a podcast, we have high hopes for 2022. While we have room to improve on all fronts, my feeling is that we have a solid foundation now, thanks to the additions of Watke and Vince, for producing at least two good episodes and one good newsletter a week. We are refining our craft, we have a ton to talk about over the next 12 months, and we have a new website, scuffedhq.com, which will make it easier for people to track us down.
We think we can continue to be the home of high-information USMNT aficionados, but also a starting point for new or returning fans drawn in by the excitement of a World Cup year. Our goal is to double our patronage by the time the first match kicks off in Qatar. Many of you have supported us on Patreon for years, and it’s not possible for us to thank those of you enough. If you are a listener who has thought of subscribing on Patreon, and need a little nudge to make that move, consider this a nudge. Here’s the link. Subscribing gets you into the Discord, which is a land of immediate access, meticulous Greg Velasquez video clips, and arguments with people who have a wide variety of perspectives on the men’s national team. But the real value proposition of a Patreon subscription is just that it’s a tangible, goodwill way to support the Scuffed Podcast, which is ad-free and entirely listener-supported. And even at the highest level, $10, it costs less than a meal for two at Chick-fil-a each month.
May all your 2022 resolutions be achievable and your resolve to achieve them unbreakable.
- Belz
Mailbag: Year of the Animal
Mark in Virginia asks: What's the national team's deal with animals?
The sighting of the alpine marmot was the major inflection point. After they saw the marmot* they started getting more and more into animals.
It happened during a team-building excursion to a mountain glacier (Behind the Crest: The Switzerland Episode). They were in the cable car looking out across the good view. Then one of the guys shouts "Look at him!” and another: “That’s amazing!." Everyone clamors closer to the window and the camera-person pans down and we can just make it out. You've never heard a group of people so happy about a marmot.
Next thing we know they're visiting the Cincinnati Zoo. And soon after that Berhalter is making references to the specific hunting strategies of African dogs to a room full of knowing nods. They had clearly begun watching nature documentaries together. In terms of the reason for all this? I suspect it was a gradual increase over several years, but that Christian Pulisic was a driving force.
Pulisic loves animals more than anyone I know. He’s had horses, dogs, and his forearm is painted like a tiger. This summer he tried to show a fish what soccer is. It didn’t go particularly well; he ended up falling on top of the fish, but the thought alone counts for a hell of a lot in my book.
He wasn’t there for the marmot sighting but it wouldn’t surprise if he’d been riling the boys up before-hand over all the great animals they’d get to see in the Alps.
I have the group’s evolving relation to animals as one of my big things to watch in 2022.
*It’s also possible it was a snow leopard. It’s tough to make out exactly in the video, and they never identified it to us.
- Watke
(editor’s note: it was not a snow leopard)
Discord Download/Midweek Minutes
Easily the most dramatic moment in the Discord over the festive period was the unofficial trial of senior MLS soccer writer Matt Doyle. The prosecution was a bit scattered but in the end, Doyle himself came to his own defense and…we won’t say it was on a level with “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “A Few Good Men,” but you get the idea. Courtroom drama. It happened, oddly enough, in the #transfer-rumors channel. No, Doyle is not transferring to Scuffed. Even if he were available, we wouldn’t be able to afford him, but he is a friend of the podcast and, after all, just a man. Not a prophet, nor a priest, nor a king. He stood by Arriola for Jamaica (and Jamaica only), defended Lletget as still the best non-Wes goal-dangerous midfielder (for now), and questioned Busio as a current fit for the national team.
Jamie Hill shared this typically balanced take:
It’s late 2021, so a boring mid-week slate in Europe featured two under-23 Americans in the Premier League. Christian Pulisic went 90 minutes at right wing back in another grinding Chelsea performance, a draw with Brighton. Josh Sargent played 10+ minutes in another Norwich loss.
Luca De La Torre is playing quite well in the Eredivisie this season. The former Fulham product is, however, almost 24 years old, complicating his transfer value and appeal outside of the Netherlands. A reminder:
In any Discord server, you can learn about the community by its custom emojis. This is true for Scuffed. We have added many, many custom emojis in our short existence. From time to time, we will show off some of them in a naked bid to coax people into the Discord, and learn which gaps need to be filled in the lexicon. In today’s newsletter, let’s get to know some of the essentials…
:deuceshades: - The most flexible emoji of all; used to express all manner of emotions, including the thrill of victory.
:glory: - The emoji you drop when all is right in the world, like when Christian Pulisic plays 200+ minutes in a week for Chelsea without getting injured, or Gianluca Busio drops a pin on the other touchline for the Stars and Stripes, or when you wake up after 8 hours of restful sleep and remember that Ricardo Pepi is ours.
Whenever a new Scuffed pod drops, we all live for the jazzy bumper music, and as soon as we hear it, we all drop the :red_and_blue_trumpet: reactions in the #pod_chat channel.
:pulisob: and :giocringe: are the emojis to use when expressing disappointment or sadness. We thank our Golden Boys Christian Pulisic and Gio Reyna for their iconic sadfaces. Their pain gives voice to our pain every day.
If your emotions don’t quite match our boys, you can use the classic :pain_crying_jordan: emoji too.
But sadness can also be expressed through Pod Daddy Belz, thanks to the :crying_belz: emoji. It’s okay, Belz, everything will be okay!
:chefskiss: is yet another popular way for Scuffians to express delight when our USMNT boys enjoy success for club and country
And sometimes, a Scuffian says something or a USMNT player does something or posts something on social media that just leaves you feeling fun and flirty - the kind of feelings you feel when you’ve just been given the smolder from the USMNT’s most handsome player. There’s no shame in that in our server. And when the moment hits you while you’re Online, that just means you’re :In_The_Mood_For_Lletget:
- Coach Beard, MJM-borne69 (Matt) & Belz
Weekend Playbill
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