6/27/24: Mark Followill From AppleTV, On FC Cincinnati vs. Dallas.

Mark Followill is calling this week's FC Cincinnati/Dallas tilt for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

He joined us on ESPN1530. 

Podcasts of The Mo Egger Radio Show are a service of Longnecks Sports Grill.

Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Twenty one after five. This isESPF fifteen to thirty m o A FC
Cincinnati. You hate to say thatit feels like a lot of air has
come out of the balloon because theyonly lost one match, but they lost
a match to a team that wethink we thought they'd get at least to
point against. They lose another playerin Nick Haglan. The Matt Miosga news

(00:20):
this week was not unexpected, butstill sobering. And it was like a
two weeks ago. They were gettingready to come back from the international break
and we talked about this team kindof hitting the ground running, which which
they did in terms of getting points, but they've taken some personnel losses and
they do need to play better thanthey did on Saturday. They'll get a
crack at Dallas a road tilt onSaturday evening that starts at eight thirty.

(00:44):
You could watch it on Apple TVpart of MLS Season Pass, where the
game will be called by a guywho is quite busy. He's the TV
voice of the Dallas Mavericks, soobviously he followed their run to the NBA
Finals very very closely and has thematch on Saturday night. Mark followill Is
with us. It's good to haveyou, Mark, thank you for joining
us. How are you? Yeah, great, good to be here,

(01:06):
looking forward to the game. Ihad FC Cincinnati and San Jose a couple
of weeks ago, so that wasfun. And you know, I get
up your guys way too for someBig ten network football. So so who
knows, I might be the zoomingthrough Ohio at some point later on this
year, Nile. We hope thatthat's the case. When when you talked
about Saturday Night from a from anf C Cincinnati perspective, is is that

(01:27):
the main angle, at least atthe top, this team trying to figure
out how to get by without somekey guys on the back line. Yeah.
Sure, you know, I heardyour intro, and and maybe I'm
kind of a glass half full guy, you know, I look, there's
still a lot of talented players inthe team. And you know, bear
in mind, not only do theyhave two injuries to deal with, the
two serious Winston Matt and Oz gettingNick Aglin, but you know, being

(01:49):
a WOLVEDO is on red card suspensionfrom last week, and I think look
that that changed the game last week. Obviously, there were a couple of
defensive breakdowns leading to the goals inthe half. Look, I love the
fight and the team. I thoughtthe energy of the crowd. Some of
it was frustration with the number offouls being called against Cincinnati and not being

(02:13):
reciprocated in terms of fouls against NewEngland. But I thought, uh,
you know, everything was channeling andpointing in the right direction for Cincinnati.
Emilosade pulls one back off the beautyof a delivery from from Lucia Costa,
and then the red card happens,and I still thought there was a lot
of fight after that. I mean, if you were called with nine players
because they'd used all the subs andHaglan had the unfortunate injury, They're down

(02:35):
to nine guys and still had aLuca Origano opportunity Origano opportunity to tie the
game that required a save ami thechase in New England goalkeeper off a corner
kick there in the last and thelast little bit of stoppage time. So,
uh, this is a good team. Uh that obviously, you know,
you know how good they are.They one supporter shield last year.
They're used to dealing with adversity.This is going to be particularly troubling to

(02:57):
lose two key guys, but uh, that's what the upcoming transfer window is
for to try to fortify that.And that's what you know, you've got
a thirty man roster for and whatother guys will step up to do.
And so I have no doubt that, especially given their road their road performance
this year. You know, Ithink it's important to remember that these guys
have twenty two road points this year, the most of Major League Soccer,

(03:19):
and seven road wins, also themost in MLS. So I think you
know they're going to have their headin the right place coming to this game
on Seburth. They've also been reallygood over the last couple of seasons at
not letting a loss turn into alosing streak, right, And the main
reason why it helps when you havethe reigning league MVP, so Lucho Acosta.
I ask all your colleagues every singleweek when we get one of them

(03:40):
on, like, do you whatsuperlatives do you use? How do you
describe them? What's it like callinga Lucro Acosta match? Oh my gosh,
yeah, you know it's funny.Today I talked to Pat Noon and
asked if anything that he does stillsurprises him. And I say that,
you know, having that San Josegame two weeks ago where where Kubo had

(04:01):
the hat trick and all three goalsby Kubo were assisted by a cost to,
and Pat said when we talked today, you know, nothing, nothing
surprises him. And the great thingabout that performance was that he wasn't having
the best game and then all ofa sudden had three kind of individual moments
of brilliance and just you know,the division for the ball in the first

(04:21):
goal, you know, the timingfor the third goal, and to me,
like I know that the finish wasa little weird. How you know,
there was a there was a bitof a fortuitous bounce, but Lucco
still basically broke down like four guysin the box for San Jose. And
I know San Jose is not verygood defensively, still that was a master

(04:43):
class and just one dude shredding almostan entire other team the way he set
up that second goal. So look, Lucio is a very special player.
His delivery on set pieces, hiscreativity when he had the ball a round
to play, you know the factthat he I mean, look you can
see it, like I said onthat second goal that he sets up in

(05:06):
the San Jose game against Cubo,It's like he strikes fear into the opponent.
Nobody wants to lunge in on achallenge and can see a penalty or
dive in and be made to lookstupid because he maneuvers around him a nutmegs
him or something like that. Sohe's just man, there's a there's a
very very long list of superlatives thatare available to use, and I just

(05:29):
I think, let's see if Iwere going to throw a new one out
there. He's capable of incandescence.How about that? Yeah, yeah,
all right, of incandescence when he'sat the height of his game, which
is a lot of the time,at the biggest moments too, Right.
That's that's the thing. I mean, you know, we've we've seen it
time and again. It's often beenwith the game hanging in the balance or

(05:50):
a result in peril, where hedoes something that's just on its own awesome,
but the timeliness of it is isinsane. Well, you know,
if I may borrow from something thatI saw recently that's kind of made the
rounds and social media, that isthe the Roger Federer commencement speech that he
gave a Dartmouth recently, and Ilook, I think there's there's a great

(06:12):
life lessons to be learned from thewhole thing. And as it applies to
what you just said and what yourcomment was about about Luco acoust him,
he has become. As Roger Federersaid in his contency, I would recommend
anybody go watch it. But basicallythe gist of it is he won eighty
percent of his matches, but youknow the way tennis is, he only
won fifty four percent of the points, and so he was able to put

(06:32):
each lost point behind him. Andhe said what he was able to do
was be, you know, haveall of his intensity and all of his
focus on the next thing, andhe became the master of the hard moments.
And that's sort of the life lessonhe was trying to impart upon all
the young graduates in the speech thatin your life, when bad things happen,
you put it behind you and youbecome the master of the hard moments.

(06:55):
And I don't necessarily think that thatLucco has bad moments that he has
to put behind him. But toyour point about his ability to have this
incandescence and the most important moments ofmatches he certainly has at this stage of
his career with this club, whichhe said when he resigned. You know,
I saw the interview that he gavewhenever he resigned and talked about how

(07:16):
important, how long he had dreamedof being a long term piece of a
great club. And that's what heis with FC Cincinnati, and he has
become the master of the hard momentsbecause of his ability to shine, you
know, the brightest, when thelights are brightest and the pressure is the
biggest, and he's just able toperform at an extraordinarily high level. That's

(07:38):
very well put. Mark Followill fromMLS Season Pass Apple TV. FC Cincinnati
on the road against Dallas, firsttime these two sides have met since twenty
nineteen, the Orange and Blues firstseason in Major League Soccer. You're down
there, so you're a little bitmore familiar with this team than most.
From an SC Cincinnati perspective, Whatshould concern us about Dallas? Well,

(08:01):
they acquired Petro Musa, who isa striker who was playing at Benfica,
Croatian international handful of international appearances withCroatia. He was playing at Benfica in
Portugal and that was a club recordtransfer fee for FC Dallas earlier this year.
And Petro Mussa has scored nine goals. He's come to life as of
late, one goal against Seattle overthe weekend. Now FC Dallas blew that

(08:24):
game. They were up two niland lost three two and it fell apart
in the last fifteen minutes essentially,but he had a hat trick in the
midweek game before that against Minnesota,so that would be the first thing that
I would point to. FC Dallashas an outstanding goalkeeper, Martin poss who's
in his third season with the teamand three years running has always been amongst
the best in the league in savepercentage. Now their new interim manager,

(08:50):
Peter Lukson, who was an assistantcoach on Nico Estebus's staff, and Nico,
of course was let go a fewweeks ago. I believe after the
June eighth game that they true againstMinnesota was Nico's last game. So this
will be Peter Luksane's fourth game asthe interim manager. So there's always the
new manager bang, and so youknow that was evident in the first two

(09:13):
games at FC Dallas won and reallythey were in position and win three in
a row and then it just completelycollapsed on the other night. But one
thing that Peter has said in talkingto him is he loves how well his
goalkeeper is playing. But obviously theywould like to take some of the pressure
off their goalkeeper. I mean,it's it's great when your goalkeeper makes a

(09:33):
bunch of saves, but that alsomeans he's having to make a bunch of
saves, which is sort of thecatch twenty two. So I think you
know, they have a striker who'splaying very well. There's a real focus
right now on trying to get theiract together defensively because they have the conceeding
a lot more goals than they typicallydo over the course of this season,
and they do have one player ofnote back this week. Now. They've

(09:54):
got some other injury news that's developing, including Jesus Baeda coming out of the
game last week against Seattle with anapparent injury, and I think more news
is going to be coming out aboutthat as the hours lead up towards kickoff
on Saturday night. But they alsohave a NDI back from a yellow card
accumulation suspension in the last game againstSeattle. He's a deep lying midfielder,

(10:16):
but he is an important component totheir team. And you know, for
those who are familiar with the USnational team, not that they get appearances
anymore for them than Paul ri Yoland Sebastian Legit are a couple of names
I think most people would know,and those are those are other key components
of what FC Dallas is doing.They played if we're playing with a back
three mo whenever the year started.That's what Nico kind of transitioned to.

(10:39):
But since they've made the managerial change, they've been setting up a little bit
differently in each match. So we'llsee, you know how they set up
on Saturday against the season Sinati.That's about as in depth they scouting reporters
I ever could have asked for thematch on Saturday night. I would give
you more. Passed that along toPat Noon in eight thirty Apple TV MLS
Season pass U FC Cincinnati on theroad at Dallas. Your MAVs are on

(11:03):
the clock and eleven picks, SoI'll let you run. Man. I
do appreciate the time, Thank youso much. Yeah, well, I
think everybody is all focused on BronnieJames, that's the focus of the second
round. Are you guys, like, are you guys what haeppen? Are
you guys crossing your fingers hoping maybethe Lakers say no and like he'll be
the missing piece to a team thatmade the finals. Bronnie, Yeah,

(11:24):
I have a feeling the Lakers are. If there's ever a certainty in the
second round, especially in this weirddraft, even more so than Reesa che
going to Atlanta number one, themost certainty in terms of a pick in
this NBA draft is Bronny going tothe Lakers at fifty five. Here in
the next twenty or thirty minutes,I guess all right, well, uh
we'll let's you get to it.Enjoy the match on Santa Man. You

(11:46):
got it. Yeah, nice totalk, Mel, You got do appreciate
the time. Thank you so much. Mark Followill is the voice one of
the voices of mL se'son past AppleTV. Dude's got a good broadcaster's voice.
I sat there in admiration, Like, man if I if I smoked
eight packs of cigarettes a day,I could sound like that.