Hooray Monday, and hooray beer. This episode of The American Soccer Show is chock full of MLS, USMNT and American abroad talk all situated around a chat with the man behind The Free Beer Movement. We bumbled our way into dual themes of a good news/bad news dichotomy and growing the American game through evangelism.
We open with Jared's admonition for people opening their driver's side doors on the street. Apparently he nearly took someone out. Now that would have been a story. Instead, everything is fine and Jared sets us up perfectly to move into Charlie Davies' dive/foul and the subsequent vehicular celebration. There's a bit more MLS from the weekend, focusing on the rough day for New York and Tim Ream, before we move into the US U-20s coming up short in Guatemala: Thomas Rongen might have to take the bullet. The first segment closes with a bit of MLS boosterism courtesy of Real Salt Lake's success in the CONCACAF Champions League.
Segment two is the beer segment. Dan Wiersema of The Free Beer Movement joins us to talk about his campaign to spread the joy of soccer through the mechanism of free beer. Everybody (okay, most everybody) loves free beer, so why not use it to entice friends out to a soccer match or watch party? After talking our way through the selling points of the movement, we come to the conclusion that FBM, while great as a word-of-mouth campaign, needs some serious corporate backing. Preferably from a craft beer company (Dan's preference).
After saying goodbye to Dan, we wrap up with some thoughts on FBM (Jared makes a reference to a decent movie with a terrible ending) and move into the good/bad dichotomy when it comes to Americans abroad. Jozy scored (hooray!) but Michael Bradley didn't dress (uh oh). All it takes is one more goal to turn Jozy's breakthrough into a good run of form, while Bradley could find himself iced out of the Villa squad if the Birmingham club continues to win without him in it.
A pair of emails close out the second segment. First, a little hate for El Tri from a repeat emailer that takes Jared to task for saying he roots for Mexico (when they're not playing the US) last week. Email two brings back the evangelism theme a bit, and we get a prediction of American soccer's future preeminence.
Jared gives us an American Soccer Show fantasy league standings update to close the show, and I give a little love to lower division soccer. FBM doesn't just apply to MLS and the USMNT.
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