Mm-hmm.

So she, uh, she was just the youngest player on the United States roster for the U20 FIFA Women's World Cup in Poland.

And she, she's clearly learning out there, and I said this before the year, I didn't wanna put a lot of pressure on a 17-year-old's shoulders, and I think that was the right, right thing for, you know, her.

But she's...

I feel like every time I see her play, she's a little bit better.

She's got a little bit more of an instinct and, um, you know, it reminds me of some of the young players we've seen for teams like San Diego the past few years, where they get signed their first year, they see a lot of minutes, or not...

They, they make a lot of appearances, but not a lot of minutes off the bench.

It's not gonna be breaking news, because we have been, uh, embargoed from releasing this podcast until after their announcement, but, um, care to comment on what we are anticipating Racing announcing?

[laughs]

Um, I, I asked about that a few weeks ago and all of them said, "Man, we'd love to finally get one." It, um, I, I don't know.

I'm looking forward to, at, at the, our upcoming schedule and, you know, Angel City and Kansas City are gonna be tough, tough to crack, um, at all, let alone keep a clean sheet.

I mean, Chicago, Orlando, possibly without Barbara Banda because of AFCON, um, they've been pretty toothless without her on the pitch, so maybe there's a couple chances coming up in the near future.

But I mean, that's three and four matches down the road, so let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

[laughs]

So now I think that you had said it, you're not reporting, you're not making a claim one way or another, Brendan, but you had mentioned before we started recording that you had done the math and thought that statistically speaking, pretty un- we're not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, but pretty unlikely to make it into that top eight.

Yeah.

So what have you been hearing about, you know, some of their summer plans?

So racing is notoriously very tight-lipped with their plans.

I think a lot of teams are, but racing is very much a, you know, the line is we're always looking for ways to improve the team, and we find out when we find out.

Personally, I don't think there's going to be any additions.

It's a combination of a few things.

I don't think that...

Racing's ownership has or is willing to spend the money to bring in the pieces they need currently.

And then, Brendan, let's talk about Bebianas real quick because he obviously took the, you know, has been building this culture over the past few seasons, took them to the playoffs last year, obviously, but also then this year going through a lot of adversity, you know what I mean? And I think it's interesting because Portland, obviously, I think a lot of folks remember last year with the SEIs they went through last year, but this year it was just a lot of, like, lot of injuries things out of bev janice's control uh and obviously the team has tried to make up for it with a lot of young players and that obviously hasn't really come to fruition because you know obviously it takes a while to get used to that system anyways but what have you what have you kind of seen from bev janice this year with with just her demeanor because it seems like it hasn't changed at all she still has the same belief in this squad that she had since day one But what have you seen from her? And then obviously with her contract up at the, I believe at the end of the season, you know, how big of a talking point has that been in, you know, just around the club?

So

it's one of those things where I'm like, how is Flint not getting more love? But for truly underrated, because I know that Flint is a big name, truly underrated, I'm going to say watch Ellie Jean and Lauren Millay.

Millay, I think in the 82nd minute, if she gets that far in this game, will hit 10,000 minutes of league play.

And she is so underrated.

My favorite pastime is watching matchups between racing and Washington Spirit and watching them rotate Trinity Rodman and get her away from Lauren Millay.

It's so much fun.

And then Ellie Jean, she is the quintessential example of a player who Bev is able to develop.

Flint.