Back from the Chaos: Arsenal, Community & Back to the Battery

Welcome to the Candy Crew podcast. I am granite. I am excited to be here and we've been missing for a couple weeks. Two of us have been fredding going through hysteria and areas that I have never been. I don't know if Patrick's ever been there. Patrick, what you got to say about the last couple weeks?

5, 9, Just living the best life. A little downslide and then a big pickme up next day. So a lot of emotions, a lot of football, not a lot of battery football. But now I'm ready to focus on battery.

I'm so ready to focus on battery. The the point of this podcast is kind of us catching up and because I've seen Patrick, haven't seen Ryan a whole lot because he's been off doing crazy working things. Patrick and I have. Our lives have been revolving around the Arsenal and Pat or Ryan has been. Life's been revolving around life. Ryan, how are you?

Ah, guys, I've been great. I had, I had one of my best friends got married in New York. So I took the time and flew up to New Haven, Connecticut and did a like pizza tour, took toward Yale and then went over to Portland, Maine where the Heart of Pine Stadium. Then went over to Waterbury, Vermont, did the Ben and Jerry's Factory tour, did the tour of Vermont University and then along the way I did Dartmouth College. So that was a really cool trip. And then continuing, continuing along with my C course license. And I have two teams I'll be coaching this year for Charleston United. So getting all that dealing with player commitments and players, dealing all that tryout end of tryout stuff while on the plane and flying at the airports, all that stuff. So that was pretty hectic to deal with. So that was. God, that's over with and now started a new job. So it's.

You like big sex, you like big sexy. You like big sexy flying around. You like big sexy flying around.

So you try to be.

So Patrick. Patrick. So Patrick, do you have a sign that you want to show the world that you're a fan of football? What is that? What is that bright light you have?

This is what my life has revolved around for the past 20 some years, but in depth for the past month. It has consumed all my time. You can see behind me we reap the rewards.

So big rewards, 22 years.

And for all the fans that are fans of other clubs that rooted against us in the Champions League and think it's funny, well, you have to get there still. So you guys have a lot of work to go ahead and get on it. Ryan, we don't want to hear about ESPN+ championship football. Okay?

Okay, so let's talk about ESPN championship football. So there's two teams that got relegated from the Premier League this year that I'm really sad about. One is the Wolves. Not just because Ryan, but just because I like the Wolves. They. They drew with us. Causes some heartache at the end of. When you're looking for points and you drop two, it's, it's hard to get them back. And the other one's West Ham. Declan Rice, as you know, come from there and I'll show you that in a little bit. That's kind of my bride Joy right there. Half price. Did we get up a half price? We should have because he was well worth to look. Look at the Wolves guy. Can we hear from down below us?

So Ryan doesn't really watch him. He's only a Portuguese guy with being a Wolves fan.

So Ryan, tell us about your thoughts on the Wolves getting relegated.

Well, so you have, as you mentioned with West Ham, you have two different sides that got relegated. You have one side who fought all year long, all the way up until the final day of match week 38, whereas Wolves. Yeah, we knew by October, I mean we were, we were going down in October, down with that sinking ship. And I think we did a great job under new ownership, selling the club and bringing in a, a new ownership, new, new energy and bringing in the, the flow and the process of what a club is actually gonna do when it's part of a rebuild and getting some of these players out, allowing our academy players to, to be elevated and to get those experience and to have, I mean, we got three or four wonder kids on our team now who played against big teams like Arsenal and Liverpool now and scored and help us get a draw and get us win at the end of the season. Now we're going down the championship where some of our Brazilians and these players are going to find it very nice when, when there's no Var and when that comes around, that's going to be a very, very entertaining rivalry games, especially against West Brom, who I'm excited to be facing against as well. Those are going to be the best, best rivalry game weeks right there. So I'm excited. But yeah, two totally different teams getting relegated. And I, I think Wolves are going to excel not just because I'm a Wolves fan, but because of how they've had to look through this lens since October. Whereas West Ham had it all the way until match week 38. And you know they're going to lose Jared Bowen, they're going to lose a few of their key defenders and they're not going to be able to afford some of the price tags that they have on their wage bill right now. Whereas Wolves got rid of a lot of those players. So, you know, some stuff to really think about and to think about the stuff with Tottenham would have gone through that, you know, Tottenham could have gone all the way down to League one, essentially just based off of all the financial breaches they would have broken just by being relegated. So it's crazy to think about when these clubs, when these clubs get in these types of situations. So it's cool. I wish America had something like it.

So Patrick, he was talking about some team started with a T. Who's he talking about?

Great. There's this shithole that calls himself a club and all their fans are. I mean, I think their fans are more delusional than jets fans. For a relative note, in America, they think they're the best every year. They think they're going to win and it's just a slow and slow and slow decline. They finished 17th last year, right. So they're, they're, they're not good. They barely missed going down to the championship, which, honestly, I think it would be a reverse Wrexham. We could see a team be the first team to get relegated three years in a. In a row from the Prem.

Well, you are seeing that with Lester right now, too. Like, let's not, like, let's put that in perspective. Lester won the league 10 years ago and look where they're at now. They're in League One now.

Jamie Vardy can't keep everyone afloat. He tries.

Not even the team he's playing for now. Yeah, tries. So let's, let's take our focus off the spurs because they are what they are and they're, they're true colors are coming out. So, Patrick, let's talk a little bit about the ride of. I've been an Arsenal fan for 11, 12, 13, 14 years and I wasn't around watching them when last time we won a Premier League been around through arse Wagner going down, you know, his retirement. And then you don't want to be the coach after the great coach. Right? I think everybody knows that. Well, some people don't. Then all sudden we're asked to trust the process and they bring in a coach that has never coached before and we've had a couple rough years and we've been ridiculed by a lot of different people about being, you know, second place. But, you know, who wasn't second place? Everybody else. So.

Yeah.

So how, how is. What's your thoughts? I mean, how did you. It's just an emotional ride.

Related. I haven't felt like a lot of emotions come back. For me personally, growing up playing club soccer and just being taught like the way we're supposed to play and seeing that in a club at a young age, like 7, 8 years old, and it's few broadcasts you get to see because Manchester United was so big back then that I think everyone in America was a fan of Man United and just being in a soccer culture. And the coach, my coach is telling me this, you're. We're playing this way, we're playing possession ball and we're trying to knock it into space and move and create and there are no weak links on the field. It's just weak connections. If you guys can get better through practice and training together and doing this and luckily through this kind of window that we got to see Man United play in, in the States, because it was very limited access, I was exposed to Arsenal and enamored with how they played. And in quotation marks, they played the correct way. The way I was being taught how you should play and how you should move and how you should always be there for teammates and open up and just bringing guys in who may not fit the mold or players you don't think are this type of player. And yes, you can transition to another position, you can play here. You're never closed off on your abilities in the footballing world. If you think you're a great striker but you're just not scoring, what if you move to winger? Could you become the better winger and help your teammates out even more, which in sense helps you. So at a young age, I fell in love with this club. And like I said, you don't get to see a lot of coverage nowadays. You could see every single game if you want, if you pay for it. If you're Bill Gates and you have the money to buy every streaming service, you could see every game on tv. But as a kid, you only had these glimpses. And I remember I was 14 or 15 and a huge memory of mine was watching the last Champions League final that Arsenal were in, the only one against Barcelona. And just being taken back by that moment, I didn't get to see the year before. I didn't get to. Wasn't broadcast to us to see the Invincibles and a lot of their games. I mean, you can get Highlights and you can kind of piece it together. Honestly, video games are a huge part. Getting FIFA, EA Sports fc, whatever it's called nowadays. But FIFA back in the day and getting to play with these players and, and see their names and know who they are was a big help. So, yeah, I mean, from there it kind of grew like throughout high school and college and now I'm in my later 30s and it's come full circle. I get to see my club that I fell in love with as a kid win and host a trophy of the Premier League. I don't care about the banter from every other club because you can go on talk about, oh well, they didn't do it this way or this way. It's like, well, we did it and I'd much rather be a club. Like you talked about Granite. We went through Lowe's if you weren't there. Support supporting us with Scrodon Mustafi playing defense and just getting dribbled past by nobodies and scored on. You weren't there during that time. I don't want like all the woodwork fans coming out now. Like Arson Wenger put a team into the top four in Champions League his entire career. An almost impossible thing to do, honestly. Impossible. I think I'll get your agreement on that. No one's ever done that. And to go from a coach of such a legendary status, a team of this pedestal never lost a game in a season. No one's done it since. No one did it before. The Invincibles are their own thing in the prem. To have this club who crawled out of this gutter, formed this identity, took charge through Merkel, Arteta and a whole new board, a whole new sporting director like Love a do. He got us there, but we have the new one now and he's what got us over that hump. Signing these players, the correct players, fitting a system, still sticking to our identity as a club and bringing youth players up through the system, giving them a shot, giving them meaningful minutes. Not Carabao Cup, FA Cup. We're up by five. Here's a minute of playing time. You see the likes of Bukayo Saka came through. That's why he's a star. We have Max Dalman shining. You have pretty much half of the Premier League teams have an Arsenal player who came through the academy and is one of their starters.

I cannot believe you miss another player. Mls.

I'll be quiet now, but I mean, there's so many names I can go to. He's one of my favorite players. We have winnery who's out on the. You have so many guys, but just a club who didn't stray away. Is the only financial stable club in all of big Europe. So let's just talk about that. The big five leagues, only stable club that doesn't have a debt.

And, and they, they have a women's team that is phenomenal. Just, it's incredible. It's incredible.

I will say, I will say Wolves, our women's team, get. Did get a trophy this year and did get promoted. So we will be seeing Arsenal next year. Just want to say that. Okay. On the woman side.

Very good.

So, yeah. But all in all, it's. It's been an emotional ride this past month of seeing something come to fruition and the journey that we've been on and the, the hard work. Yes, we finished second for a few years in a row, but I remember finishing mid table for the first time ever and just being like, yeah, I don't know for.

Not 17, though, but not 17.

I don't know if we were ever going to get back to that top four. And as fans, there was a point where we were like, I mean, European football would just be nice to be able to get back to. And it wasn't a realistic thing. And here we are, what, 10 years, eight years removed from that, seven years, and we're winning the Premier League title. So all in all, hands down, a season I will remember for the rest of my life. And I think it's all due to my child being born this last year. This is the whole reason. She's the best good luck charm I've ever, ever seen in my life.

And Palmer was almost all the matches watching there at Edmonds Oats Brewing Company. Yeah, I didn't come to soccer until later on in life. And it was really a deployment to Djibouti, Africa. And when soccer come important becoming important to me as seeing as there I am strapped with all sorts of weapons and everything, and these kids that have flip flops they use for a goal post and just a patch of dirt saying, hey, come play with us. Well, they speak in English, but they'd wave me over there. And finally one day I said, you know what? I'll go over and kick the ball around. And they just. It was. Now I look back, I'm like, I was an idiot. They were. They were Nutmegging me like 16 times before I could even move. But I was like, you know, this, this sport, this is before I knew what the term beautiful game means. This sport is Incredible that it can go anywhere on the face of the earth and you can throw a spherical thing on the ground and throw a couple flip flops in for goals and people are talking the same language. And so when I come back, say, well, I guess I got to pick a team and MLS is not my gig, I guess because they were kind of not even starting up. Really what the Arsenal kind of spoke to me because I realized as an artilleryman back in the day that hey, I should go with a team that has a cannon on its chest. And that's how I come into it. And then it's just been despair and drudgery and everything else until here recently. And we've been at Edmunds Os and we've watched matches and just hugged each other and just had an incredible ride the whole way. And talking about young players coming in and starting out as left back is, you know, 15, 16 year olds and then moving their way up. Got Max Downman, 16 year old, hoisting this trophy. And when he came on the pitch the couple times he did it wasn't like he was just a shrinking violet, he was taking it to people. And so it's amazing to watch the process that we were told to trust by, by Mikel Arteta and I see a lot of similarities with what Ben Pearman is trying to do too. You know, build up the those two center backs and build from there. You look at Gabrielle and Saliba, just incredible pairing that just almost didn't come together. But through the perseverance of great leadership and a great coach and you know, Kronke and all them having faith in decisions and it brought those two together. And then our left and right backs have been a flurry of different people that filled in when they needed to. Ben White, Tommy and you just list them all. And it's just amazing to watch how it builds and, and when I watch Pyramid, I watch the Battery build up and I, you know, other teams, Liverpool and them probably do the same thing. But it's so cool to see the similarities between the two teams. And it's a little bit different because we will lose people from the Battery that go on to other teams, but you lose people from Arsenal might go to Barcelona or something like that that, you know, have other European aspirations. But it's so cool to see, you know, the center backs being paired up. It's so cool to see people move to different positions. You know, there's a center back that is fantastic. Then all of a sudden he's playing, you know, offensive midfielder and Just, it's incredible. And this season I was sitting at my desk and it's amazing how many people we filled into Edmunds Oats Brewing Company over the whole season. And sometimes there was 20 people. The champions League match and the Premier League match final. The last one we played, we probably had about 300 people. But the Champions League, we had to close down the front door because we had too many people. Not too many. We're at capacity, around two something and outside. I went outside at one point because somebody told me, brad, you need to go outside. And it was just amazing. Estimate we had over 500 Arsenal fans there watching the match. And it was just. The end result wasn't what we wanted, but the. Just the community was just incredible. And it's amazing to be along for a ride and I look forward to doing that same ride with a battery. Then I look forward to next year and I look forward, you know, to see in all sorts of young men coming to their own and being able to play at a level that they're, that they shouldn't be playing at and young men coming out and people not having a whole lot of faith in them and then all of a sudden they're killing it. People that like Ben White. I keep going back to him because he's kind of my dark arts guy. He doesn't even watch football on the weekends, you know, but he loves to play and he played through injuries and young people don't play through injuries. But he's at a different level, played through injuries. He was causing all sorts of chaos, everything else, but at the end, you know, he was standing tall with everybody else and just amazing. And I think one of the coolest things is watching the importance of phenomenal keeper and, and David Rya. I mean, we've been through a couple keepers. We all, we all love Ramsdale. He was incredible. But then when they brought in David Rya, everybody was like, ah, let's see how this works out. And he's just an incredible keeper and a leader from the back and it just shows where when you start building from the back and forward, good things will happen.

I absolutely love that, Love your story on how you became an Arsenal fan especially. And I want to hear, also like to hear from our, from our listeners too, if they want to send in, you know, how they became about following their favorite team. You know, like, for me, following Wolves just simply came from playing on FIFA and wanting to not fall into that Big Man United fan group, you know, wanting to understand more about soccer and why certain teams do certain things. And Wolves, as Patrick mentioned earlier, is like a Portuguese safe haven and love that. And I do favor Portugal for this World cup too, but that is absolutely incredible. And I love that you guys had what a showing. And it's all year long. It was incredible following you guys on social and seeing like each week it just slowly grew. Not slowly. You guys had spurts where you know, you'd have big groups. You know, life goes on each week. It's a long season. But as the season progressed and he got closer and closer, everyone was just putting a hole on what they were doing and they were showing up to admins those for y'. All.

And except for one match, except for one match. I'll talk about that one. I'll talk about that one, man.

Okay, go ahead.

So it was the Cherries versus Man City and nobody was. Because it was a Tuesday game, nobody was going there to watch it. Except for somebody don't normally see their fairness.

Arsenal played Monday.

Yeah, we played Monday, so everybody was there.

But Tuesday it was fairly big. I was personally out of town and I got off at about 4:30, so I got to listen to the tail end. I was about an hour and a half away, so.

And I think the assumption was that Man City was gonna, you know, take care of Bournemouth and this is going to go down the last day, last match. And when the Cherry scored, all of a sudden a bunch of us started texting on WhatsApp and everything else said, should we meet up, meet up. And so. But a little bit after second half, a bunch of us showed up in our business attire. I say, but there's like 10 of us. And so this whole season, you know, the charcenal people threw money together to buy big old TVs to replace some of the older aging TVs and Edmonds O's have all the sound system, everything else. And the pivotal the match, the one that matters the most is Bournemouth playing Man City. And there's about 10 of us gathered around the smallest TV in the place with no sound on it. And it was just, it was just incredible. When they drew, we just knew that that was it. That was. And we didn't know what to do because we've never been there. So all you Liverpool people, all you man see people go like, yeah, we know what to do. Yeah, okay, that's fine and quite down. But it was just a moment that was just surreal. And let me tell you, when the last match was party time, I don't think anybody watched the match. We just sang the whole time. And I'll post some stuff on social. It was just. It was a party. I mean, just because we all been. None of us played a second any match, but we all felt like we'd been through the trenches, you know, in the trenches with Arteta and everybody else. And it was just an incredible experience. And that was pre Champions League final. But, Patrick, what's your thoughts on that?

It's a community, right?

This is.

It's a reflection on, I'd say, a lot of last year and the year before with the Battery of trying to have these meetups and kind of get these watch parties going to create more of a sense of community. We all don't like the same professional clubs, but as a city, we all support the Battery and we want the Battery to do well. And we want to see the growth of football in this country. We want to see it head in the right direction. We want to see the right pillars in place to keep that structure going and. And keep it running smoothly and keep it from becoming a corporation. So, yeah, I mean, the one thing you can fall back on, and I don't know about all of you, but I'm not originally from here. And whenever I've moved somewhere, the only thing that brings me close to people or makes me friends and creates that whole new life to start up is sports. And for me, it's soccer. Football. Getting to find a supporter's bar and go watch Arsenal. Finding a Facebook group for pickup soccer in whatever town you're in is crucial. Join it. They'll just post times, they'll post dates. You don't have to go to every single thing, but if you want to make one, you'll. I have some of the best friends in my life that I met at pickup at an Arsenal supporters bar. Like, you can travel across the country and go and meet new people, and the only thing you have in common is you like this team or you're a fan of a sport and you can agree on that, or you have a common enemy of your sport. So, like, it's just crazy how much life revolves around such a meaningless game in the scheme of things. And I love our community. I love our support. I love what we have with our English professional club that we support. I just want the Battery to grow this level. I want to have a more immerse and culture creation with the Battery. I want to have fans talking. I want not just friendly family environment. I want people in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s that just want to go. You don't have to go grab a beer to watch the game, but you can go grab a soda, grab a bite to eat, hang out and just talk. And hey, why? What got you into the Battery? You know, open your eyes up, meet some new people and just grow. And that's the only way we'll grow this sport and grow this love for the game and in turn, get more people in the stands, get our own stadium that's owned by the club. Get a youth academy in the long run, develop our. Your children, our city's children, into a talented group. Get better coaches in, better developmental coaches, training coaches. Get better classes, freeze free. Everything, everything across the board comes down to the people in the community. So.

And I think you're. Yeah, you're hitting it on the head because it's all about community. It's about culture. And no matter who we support, except for spurs people. But anyway, no, we still love you. That just, it's, it's a common language we all have. And that's where I was going to earlier. It's like, that's the reason why it's a beautiful game because I. You don't have to speak Brazilian. You don't have to. Or for Portuguese, you don't have to speak Spanish, but you throw a soccer ball out there, a football out there, and everybody's talking the same language. And that's, that's the amazing part of me. And I don't know if you guys noticed the last week or so, I don't know what percentage it means. I don't know what the percentage means, but in the United States, soccer just jumped over baseball for most watched or followed sport in the United States. So it's NFL, the, that basketball, and then now soccer. It used to be baseball. So the America's game is now fallen below the. Not America's game.

I want to, as you both have talked about some very meaningful stuff I just want to share with our listeners too, about, you know, how this podcast came about, you know, where we came from, you know, not being from here as well, moving down here two, three years ago, this being our second year on here, I met you. We all, I'm pretty sure we all met each other through soccer through.

We did.

Granite met you through a pickup game in Somerville. And then that led you introducing me to Patrick. And then Patrick came up for a soccer game and, you know, us just sitting there talking afterwards, going to Dog and Duck. And then we decided to do a podcast and wanting to not talk to our community and help grow and build the game. How can we make the future brighter for our youth and giving them the ample opportunities in which they would like to go about whether it's rec, whether it's club, whether their goal is to go to college or whether it's to potentially try to go pro. Like, those opportunities and pathways are there. And that is why we do this and why we want to continue to grow while also supporting our local big club here in Charleston. And as you know, you both just said, too, you're seeing that 500 group crowd outside, and at the same time, you're. You love it and want to embrace it and every ounce of you. But while we also are doing this on the side in our own city, it kind of leads us like, what can we do to get this here with the battery now? And, you know, that's a good question. And we know that what you guys went through, that there are people out there who like soccer. It's not hidden. It's not. It's not a secret. It's not whatever. It, you know, it could just be who they follow. But, you know, I'm always here to. To show you guys that, you know, I'm not an Arsenal fan, but I will go to Edmonds Oaths and I'll. I'll sit there and support them like it's. You're watching a game now. If they are playing Wolves, it's a little differently now. We won't have to worry about that this year. But, you know, maybe FA cup talking, you know.

Yeah, I think you raised a great point, Ryan, and that what Granite was talking about with the hundreds of people there. Yes. There were one offs. I know one guy I talked to driven two hours up from Hilton Head because he was like, this is the place to watch the game. I'm watching the game here.

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Isn't it amazing that people from Greenville all around South Carolina come here just to watch with us?

But regardless, the majority of people are from here. So we have this sense of football is life, soccer is everything. We need to do a better effort as people who like the battery of hey, come to a game or hey, if season ticket holders, I know you don't want to miss a game, but find someone who's not going and grab their tickets and give them to someone you might know who's never been. And like, just try and get them involved because the people are there, they love soccer. It's very, very evident. Just get them in the stadium, say, hey, let's support our club locally, too. I know you don't have to be all in and this rah, rah. But when you watch a team grow over a season like we've watched, and you watch the turnover of players and you see this development and what the coach is trying to do, and then you see these massive signings, massive leavings, you start to get emotionally involved and you start to want to do a little bit more with these clubs. You want to do something to make a difference. I mean, I. I personally believe just us talking so much brought back those stands behind the goal, brought back the standing area, brought back an area for people to watch. I mean, it's so up close and personal with the goalie. It's amazing. Like, all of this has an effect. And I guess what I'm just trying to say is support the Battery. And if you're a Battery fan, take someone who you're not normally friends with, who likes soccer. Like, I have friends that are Liverpool friends. Ugh. I know, but take them, introduce them. Who knows, maybe they fall in love with the team and say it is amazing getting to see live soccer played at not a U9 level or just a pickup level. You get to go ahead. Yeah. A professional team. And what better team to get in on than a team with so much history, so much talent, so much promise and everything going forward in this scope of U.S. soccer, probably one of the leading clubs to be a forefront, milestone marker in this new landscape that we're about to cross into in the next couple of years.

Yep. I don't know if you all can see this. Let's see if I can get it going because I'm horrible at this crazy stuff, but it's just amazing. That was the first goal from the Champions League.

Yeah. If you see a guy jumping around in a white hat, I don't know who that was.

It was just. It's just amazing. And I love to see that continue to happen. And also with the battery just building up, because like I said, there's so many similarities all the way from the ownership, their focus, their willingness to take chances. All the way to coach Pearman, which has very similar style, is Arteta. All the way to just all the different players and how he sets them up. It's just. And it is so incredible that with the support we have out in the parking lot for the matches, the regiment sets up and there's so many people out there and everybody I talked to that going to the first match or been there a million times saying, go over there, go talk to everybody over there. They love people coming over there, it's not an exclusive club at all.

I have a question for Ryan. Wolves relegated, the Battery are in a, I think we just call it a what we an early season battery where we just trade win, loss, win, loss for a little bit until we find a groove. Is there anything you're looking forward to that's coming up to kind of maybe get, I don't know, non soccer fans, but just red blooded Americans excited?

Well, we got the 4th of July coming up with the amazing 250th anniversary, but also we have the World cup coming up and what better year to have all that going on and have the World cup in America. I mean it's, this is the time where we truly see the growth. The last time we held the World cup, you know, the head games being cut off because of a police chase was going on or you had other stuff going on where games were easily being, you know, turned off, where now every single place is going to be showing non stop matches all throughout the day during this World cup time. And you're gonna see this is one thing I did, we did talk about before where, you know, in America we are so diverse and so not fully impressed fully with our national team. To where we haven't been into top tournaments like going deep or going to where everyone's fully supporting them like we have with hockey. Like watching the men's teams go all the way through winning the gold, we're missing that on soccer. And I feel like when everyone followed with women's soccer, seeing them when they just watch the men's side and then they see Ronaldo, they see Messi and they're putting those jerseys on rather than usa. So this year is going to be a huge, huge movement where we see a lot of change, where we see more and more of the patriotic Americans coming out and supporting the USA and it's going to be an amazing tournament. It's going to be a time where, you know, you get exposed to all this different soccer and you're, you're having different communities reconnect and kids from all walks being exposed to different, different play styles from all over the world. And no matter where you're at or what team you get close to you, it's amazing to go and check out these, these camps. Like I know like Japan is in Nashville and they're doing an open training day where kids can come in and watch them train and stuff. Like even though it's a different team, it's still an amazing opportunity to be able to go and See, stuff like that. And I hope that us, we all take advantage of those types of things. I agree.

And it's just, it's gonna be a phenomenal summer for soccer, football, whatever. A lot of teams playing down in Atlanta and all over. And maybe we can make some matches, maybe we can't. But I think a lot of us will be watching work. Might be. Productivity might dip a little bit during certain matches. I don't know. Not at my. Not my productivity because it's near zero anyways. But anyways, so we're getting towards the end. I want to share one more thing to you.

Hang on.

See if I can get it.

He's got to cue the music in right here.

So this is. This is incredible. I am not a sports memorabilia person and I'm not chasing autograph stuff like this. And this was given to me by somebody. Oh, yeah. Locally. And I don't know if you can read the writing on it, but somebody knew somebody that is friends with Declan Rice and he signed it.

Is that an English script?

It is. It is. It's Declan Rice script. You know, so it's just amazing to me that it was just. I was, I was moved. And now it means even more because you got one of the, you know, best center backs in the. On the face of the earth right now. And then I got the jersey signed him. His jersey signed by him. To me.

Love that center mid in the world. You're just. You got too excited. You got.

Okay, I'm sorry. Best cinnamon. So the. What our plan going forward now is we're going to focus on the battery. Of course we're going to love dreaming about the Premier League for a long more time, but focus on the battery. We just want to do this to catch everybody up. That's just why I've been missing, uh, I was surprised how much energy it takes to get to the end of the Premier League when you're here and there. Uh, and I felt like I played 90 minutes every match or more. So, anything else, guys?

Yeah, I think we're obviously diving back into the battery full time. Love it. But with all the World cup approaching, we're obviously going to get into a little bit more. Probably throughout a podcast or two.

Yeah, you never know.

But one of my buddies, Rhett Stevens, just launched a new pod called Footy F double O T Y. So he'll probably be doing some World cup analysis, little preview. Everything pretty cool. Check it out. Short, not like ours where we ramble. But yeah, I'm excited.

Yeah. And he's focused on. On football in general. Not necessarily the Battery, but just football in general and World Cup. And he's also Arsenal fan.

Yeah.

So he's. He's gonna have a lot of. A lot of talk topics. Check it out. Pretty cool. But yeah, I mean, what a time to be alive. Like. Great, great transition for the Battery. We're going to start just going undefeated. We're going to start finding that team identity. World Cup's going to start. We're also getting World cup games in US time because it's on our turf, so we don't have to watch games at 9:11am in the grass.

It's on our grass. It's on our grass.

Some stadiums, you never know.

Charlotte. You never know. But anyways, okay. Anyways. Okay. We're gonna see you Saturday night and be ready to watch. Is that it's one of those pranks cup matches. And this should put us up in the lead. I do believe. If, if. When we win it and the lads are doing well.

Oh, it's a much different. Much different cup appearance than last season for us. And again, it's like last year I saw us lose the first two in this cup and it was kind of like riding on the wall just like wolves by October, you know, throw this off in this competition. Now it's totally different. And I think, do you have to win this? You have to win it. The. The group to advance or.

Yeah, top two. Yeah, everybody has to. Everybody. I think it's a wild card entity from somewhere. I don't know how they determine that.

Okay. Okay. So I'm excited. Yeah, we keep winning. I think they're in first. Yeah, we're in first right now. So a big matchup coming up too, against Tampa. I see it coming up soon.

Who's that? You mean the Battery South? I mean the Battery.

The Battery. Want to be South?

Yeah, I want to be South. Okay, guys. Hey, up the Battery.

Up the Battery. See you on Saturday.