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Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com. Hey, welcome back, everyone. It's Brian Killmeat Joe. We're moving through this Friday and it's a busy, busy day.
With me in studio, I believe for the first time is my brother Jim. Jim, why would you come to a place like this? I had nothing to do this morning. I was just driving around Manhattan. I said, why not?
Yeah, because you're excited. Because tomorrow, the real answer is May 2nd, you open up your brand new season. The American Soccer Club, the NPSL, the league, this will be your second season. You're pumped up. Plus, we got the World Cup in a month.
Four or five weeks.
So there's a lot of interest in soccer finally. Mate, the biggest year in American soccer history, and we've been at almost from the beginning in the 70s when we started down in Long Island, but this is a big year.
So tomorrow night's our big opener, Mitchell Athletic Complex, historic, the most historic soccer facility on Long Island. It goes way, way back. And so we're pumped up. We're 25, 26 hours away, and we can't wait. And then the World Cup follows us, which is nice.
Right.
So there's some tickets available.
So if you want to go see it live, you also stream the game, right? We stream the game, Game in Frame, broadcast. I was on our YouTube channel.
So you pick it up live stream at 6 p.m. Right.
So you're looking to raise the next generation of great players, and you have the American Star Club there at Mitchell Field starting May 2nd.
So go get your tickets now if you're in the area, especially you WABC listeners. But, Jim, today we had Alex Lazri on. He is running the New York, New Jersey facility, the Giant Stadium. He's the CEO there. You know, his parents, his family owned.
Yeah.
So he is running this facility. Here's what he says about what's going on so far and some of the things they're talking about in terms of affordability cut 50. What our job is, is really to try to provide affordable and accessible experiences inside and outside the stadium. And one of the things that makes the World Cup so unique are all the people that are going to be coming here, not even planning to go to the game at MetLife, but actually just planning to be part of the World Cup experience. And so last week we announced with the mayor and governor of New York the five borough free fan experiences at the U.S.
Tennis Center, Rock Center, the Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn. And then also we've also got on the other side of the river in New Jersey, we've got our Jersey Fan Hub at Sports Illustrated Stadium and then also a 21 County watch party experience that the governor of New Jersey and I will be announcing in the next few weeks. What do you think? Because you know about marketing.
So if you can't get to the game and you don't have $5,000, go to the city. Here's my only problem with it. That's the first time I've heard about it. I'm involved in this thing 24-7. It has not hit the ground.
People do not know these opportunities are out there. And they'll be welcomed. And it's still not too late, but they have not gotten the word out yet at all. I mean, I went to the World Cup at MetLife Stadium. It was then Giant Stadium.
In 94? 94. Italy, Norway. We tailgated for three hours before the game, played soccer in the parking lot, had a great time, hung out afterwards. It was fantastic.
There's not going to be any of that this year, but I'm still very bullish about it, but I'd like to see more grassroots activities out there. I mean, the IK had nothing to do.
So you were able to hang out for three hours before the game and then hang out after the game. It's a different world. You would never be able to do that. My phone didn't even have pictures on it. You probably didn't have a phone at all.
So, Jim, give everyone an example of your background. Not only are you a great player through Hopstrew or you're a captain, but you started with indoor soccer was once huge. You started with the Arrows, and then that's where you met the Lywickies. That's right. Todd Lywicki, to this day, my mentor, what a great guy.
Tim, his brother. What a dynasty. No one ever went to college. Mike Rowe would love these guys, but they're the greatest marketers, I think, in American sports are among them. With the New York Arrows, but the Steve Jungle days, we actually increased attendance by trading away all the expensive players and bringing in all local players.
Hence what we've done later on with the Rough Riders when you were involved with us and now again with the American Soccer Club. Best Long Island, New York Metro players, put them on the field, think we can do some damage. Right.
So now you did with the Rough Friars before there was an MLS. And then the MLS launches after the World Cup, and now you're coming back with the American Soccer Club.
So, how is it different? From when you launched the Ruprise. Don Garber, MLS, fantastic job, almost on the edge of collapsing in the European 2000. And now look what we have right now.
So great job to have elevated the game. But the youth soccer market and the development of soccer market is probably a bigger disaster than it's ever been. And there's more kids playing, but it's not producing players. And right now, that's the big conversation that Landon Donovan is leading and others. Because Landon Donovan says, who's one of the greatest American soccer players ever, said that, and Tim Howard said the same thing.
And it's pretty much, it's not just soccer. If they were coming up right now, they wouldn't be able to play because they can't afford to pay the coaches. They can't afford to pay the trainers. They can't go to Disney every year. They can't go travel.
And they obviously were the best in the country. But if you're just an average player, your parents, you're lower middle class, you're middle class. I'm sorry, I have other kids. You can't play. We'll go play flag football.
It's free. And that's happening now. But look at our family, three boys, Jim, Brian, and Stephen. As you said the other day, we had to choose one of our family as a middle-class family could not afford this. But families are going into debt now to do this.
And it's not just soccer. It's all youth sports.
So we can't fix the whole thing. But it is definitely not a recipe for developing soccer players.
So you didn't say the big issue.
So our whole soccer club in the 70s went to Holland, which is unthinkable. I know this is going to come up. Right.
And here we go. My whole team goes to Holland. And I don't go. I go to Pennsylvania to Stroudsburg Soccer Club because only one of us could go and they chose you. I have never lived this.
Sorry, mom, dad. Brian's still went to the bus. But you got to go, and that's all I heard in my town for the next five years of how much fun Holland was. And I would say, well, East Stroudsburg was a blast as well, as I sat there in Pennsylvania in the mountains. Yeah, I did.
In the Poconos. I had gone to that camp the year before. It was a good camp, you have to admit, but it wasn't quite like Holland. But Judge tells you, though, our club was so far ahead of things. We had fantastic coaches, great leadership, Pat McComesky, Gordon Bradley founding the club with Hank Ostecki, and then the coaches we all had, including our dad.
And then this is a club that became the biggest club in the country, a small South Shore town, and arranged a European trip before this was popular. All right, so let's talk about the American team. Last time we saw them play, well, the second to last time, they played two games in three days against Belgium, tight in the first half, but it all fell apart in the second. Let's listen. Causing Foggle Trucks again.
We've just seen it. All the way out for Debas to try it in! Belgium O'Level in the final minutes of the first half in Atlanta. De Basque from distance with a first international goal. Doku can find him.
Doku against Mackenzie. It's 2-1 Belgium. Goku against Ward. Look who's brought in, kicks it. The return is going to come all the way through.
It's time to get a big save.
So look, they lose 5-2. I know they're using their whole roster, but I want that the U.S. team has to get to the final eight or four. They've got to find a way. Not in that game.
I mean, Belgium is a really good European team, but we've got to be able to play with them. Right.
And that's the thing. In the past, we have. You understand, we've taken Germany to the last kick in the World Cup before. We've beaten Portugal. We've beat Spain in the club, in the World Cup, not the World Cup, but the CONCACAF championships.
We have done this before. We have seemed to have regressed when it comes down to playing against elite European and South American competition. That Belgium game, you heard Doku a lot. I mean, the guy is a great player. All they gave him is a slight window, and he scored.
It wasn't like it wasn't being covered. But here's the deal: we didn't make any adjustments for it.
Now, I'm going to be positive, though. I think our coach, he's an Argentinian coach. is help bring back the American mentality. I like it. He is not tolerating, he doesn't understand how people wouldn't die for their country.
We're starting to see a team now that really cares. This last two games were a bit of a setback. I wasn't too excited over the last great ones, the great results we had with Paraguay and Uruguay and the performances. I'm not going to get too down over these last two games. All right, so we open up with three games.
First one's Los Angeles, then Seattle, then back to Los Angeles. I'll be at the first one covering it, so I'll be there.
So. Good, tell me about the matchups. You got Paraguay, number one. First, we'll have to say what we're going to call Turkey. Is it Turkey or Turkey A?
So that's how it is. Lalis calls it Turkey A, so I'll go along with that. If Alexei does it, they changed the name of their country. What makes you do that? I know Czech Republic, too.
Czech Republic, too. Czech didn't change the name of the country. He just changed the name of the Gulf. And a couple of mountain ranges, maybe. And he just put his face on money.
But that's, I don't want to regress it. That's just the minor. Nearly home. Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for Realtor.com, the pros' number one most trusted app.
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So talk about the three teams. Can we beat Turkey? Absolutely.
But we can also lose 3-1 to Turkey. Turkey is a dangerous team. They have some injuries right now. They're a team that can play against anybody. They have enormous talent.
They tend to be a little bit disorganized in the back. And it comes down to: can we actually dictate the game? Are we going to do a counterattack? Are we going to be more of a counter team? Against Turkey, I'd like to think that we're actually going to try and get a little bit more on the front foot, as they say.
Australia. We got to beat those guys. Yes. Australia is like us a few years back, incredibly fit, strong, athletic, incredibly well defending and organized. Not a lot of creativity up front to score goals.
We have more players in the front and up forward third than they do that can score. But they're going to pack it in. They're going to be very tough to play against. Right.
They know they're head to head. We have more of talent. We do. All right. And then Paraguay.
Paraguay's wild card. They could end up getting on fire. I think we beat Paraguay. Do you know how small Paraguay is? I know.
I mean, it's like Rhode Island. We should be killing these people. Rhode Island with less population, I think. But no. And it But they have talent.
They have talent. They have players in Europe. We just got to get out of the gate. I analyze these games. We got to get points.
We're going to be very pragmatic. We have an experienced coach. I'm not worried about it. We have the players. But when we have our best players, we tend not to play as well for 90 minutes.
And when we have our second-level players, if you want to call them that, we tend to play very well for 90 minutes, but not at that high level. Not a good combination.
So here's the thing. You got to come out of this. Uh wow, I don't know why that happened. Um We'll get rid of that. I don't know how that happened.
Alexi coming through. We have to come out first.
So, the U.S. team has to place first in order to play against the lowest seed in other conference. If we just get through to the knockout round, we're going to get ourselves in trouble because you're going to get a matchup that you want to meet later on. Exactly right. Like we got out of the group last time, he ended up Holland, Netherlands, right away.
Really tough team. And we did well against them, but couldn't beat them.
So I'm encouraged, but I think I'm just going to look at this the way the coach looks at it. It's one game at a time. You've got to take every game. I want to see the fight and desire that I saw from the Clint Depsey, Brian McBride, Tapp Ramos, Claudio Reina teams, Alexei Lawis. Those teams, you didn't want to play against us back then, even when we didn't have 20 guys deep.
We were a tough out. And I want to see that with the talent we have now. All right. I want you to hear more from Alex Lazry. He wants to put in perspective how popular this game will be.
Which one did I play last time? Go score 51.
So the team's going to be training here, but everyone's talking about the final, July 19th at 3 o'clock. You get to that moment, you could finally exhale. That's going to be the biggest sporting event that the world has ever seen. Just for some perspective, the last World Cup final was viewed by the same amount of people as the last 13 Super Bowls combined. Wow.
So, you know, football is America's sport. Football is the world's sport. And we're going to have billions of people watching and being a part of the World Cup right here in our region. It's going to be an incredible thing. We haven't had a World Cup in 30 years.
This is going to be an exciting event.
So, I mean, put that in perspective, I think everyone's going to be watching, and the tickets are going for, I think, $20,000. I know. I remember I bought my tickets off the secondary market for $350, and it seemed insane that we did that.
Now to get the train from New York City to New Jersey. $100 around Trip. You're getting it in every end. It's just ridiculous. We have such poor leadership in our area between New Jersey and New York to make it even worse and tougher to go to.
And we love to tailgate this country, but I guess for security reasons, we can't.
So what they wanted to do, I guess in Europeans, they walk to the games. That's a tradition.
So they would like to walk from New York City to New Jersey, and now they want to prevent people from walking it. They said it's too dangerous, but you're not going to stop these people. Number one, they don't want to pay the money. Number two is how do you stop people from walking? Right.
So they're going to walk over the water.
Well, what is it, 10 miles to get to the Middle Lands from here? Yeah.
Through a tunnel? Under a river. I mean, I don't, it's ridiculous. I think it's actually going to get worse, and let's just hope there's no security issues that happen between now and then. Obviously, the assassination attempt doesn't make it easier to relax a little bit here.
But it is a problem. It's going to be a different World Cup. I do think once you get to the game, it's going to be phenomenal. All right. Lastly, big announcement today, right?
I mean, your team started two years ago. They had nothing. Game changer. And then what happened today? We were a concept.
And we went from concept to operation, played May 4th last year, had a very successful season, put a stake in the ground. And we had great partners like LifeFAC, Erlin Cohen, Northwell Orthopaedic, Macron, and all these other local sponsors we have. But this year, we've stepped it up with Chase Bank. But specifically today, we made a huge announcement. It's a game changer.
It's going to change the dynamic in the tri-state area for youth soccer as well. Bowling Markets, great Harry Singh, the great American Success Story, 1984, Taxi Driver 2, one of the most successful businessmen in the United States right now. Bowling Marcus joined the American Soccer Club as our president. They're on the front of the jersey with Life Vacant on the back. But most importantly, they've established with us the American Soccer Club, Bola Markets, Young Fighting Tomcats, the first fully funded youth soccer academy.
That's your name, the Tomcats. In Long Island, that's Fighting Tomcats after the Long Island's great aviation history with the Grumman Corporation and the F-14 fighter jet. But now we have Bola is stepped up to provide opportunities for kids, remove all socioeconomic barriers for kids that may cannot afford it. And this is going to be huge for us. And the key thing for us, it's a supplemental program.
So if you're playing for your local club in Northport, where I live, or Massapeaque, where you live, you stay with your club and you come with us. And train for free. Train for free with our coaching staff. And the biggest thing, you're going to be training like you are in Europe and South America with the men, with our pro team. Wow, that would be fantastic.
So you get the coaches right there while you're playing. That's fantastic. Different experience. All right, Jim.
So where do you get tickets? ASCNewYork.com. You can also, there's a great special by LIFAC. All children 10 and under will come to the game. Life AC is buying two complimentary tickets for every kid on Long Island in Metro New York.
For no money, and their parents come for 10. ASANewYORK.com to get tickets. But I want the kids to come with ID. I don't want an 11-year-old getting on this deal. ID is racist.
We can't have racist. Wait, wait. Birth certificate? The birth certificate should be around. I mean, 10 years old should be exclusive.
Yeah, something like that. But I don't-year-old, don't pretend you're 10. All right, it's 10 and under. All right, congratulations, Jim. Year two is ready to go.
The fighting time gets American soccer. And also, you got to come back and continue. American Soccer Club. You got to come back and continue to break down the World Cup. As we get closer, the roster is going to be announced the day after Memorial Day, the Tuesday after Memorial Day, the roster is going to be announced.
I'm going to cover it then. There's a lot of great players.
So just making the roster is a big deal. And then I'll be able to talk to the players. I'll bring that back and then you can analyze. That all right? Great stuff.
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