The Daily Dirt January 30, 2018: Cyle Larin is a Ponzi scheme

Yesterday was a jam packed day. Orlando City keeps having good things happen to them, Anthony Precourt turned out to be such a failchild that he’s failing at ruining the league, everyone mocked Miami MLS, another NWSL draft was announced, and there was transfer news galore.

Anyway, onto the dirt...

General soccer

Just like everything else in life that people have ideas and feelings about, there is no objective truth about whether VAR is good or bad. Luckily, this means we can debate its merit into infinity, but John Nicholson at Football365 has a great bit of analysis on the subject.

Domestic

Orlando City had a big day.

First they added another attacking midfielder buying Justin Meram from Columbus. It seems like clearing out Kaka and Larin has somehow untied the half of their brain they weren’t using when making personnel decisions.

Then they got to keep the entire transfer fee from the sale of Cyle Larin rather than take a 40% hit because Cyle acted like an enormous buffoon and forced the transfer by ignoring the club option OCSC had exercised. Meanwhile, Atlanta was in a situation where they either sold Carlos Carmona so he could be with his wife during her pregnancy, or be the team who didn’t sell a player to be with his pregnant wife. In short, Orlando is being rewarded for being incompetent and trying to coerce a player to stay when he wanted out and every other team in the league has to actually follow the rules. Do you hate MLS yet?

The Orlando news comes as the Crew seem set to be tanking in a pre-Austin move season. While they are simultaneously negotiating for a new stadium in Columbus after the Austin city council were welcomed to the #SaveTheCrew movement.

Miami MLS was officially announced after being granted a franchise nearly half a decade ago, the internet had jokes:

A while back I mocked up a crest for the club on MS Paint, I think it has a strong chance at being selected:

Just in: It’s been rejected in favor of this:

I guess not all the jokes were funny:

Brian Straus had news and jokes:

Enough jokes and news, time for guilt: Dan Dickinson is here to remind you that while MLS is dedicated to growing, it is more dedicated to forsaking history and tradition:

NWSL has scheduled a dispersal draft for the former Boston Breakers players for 4PM this afternoon:

International

The EPL is back today, it’s one of the best leagues in the world - uh, I guess check out Swansea vs. Arsenal? Best leagues in the world you say?

There’s some transfer roomers from Barcelona, PSG, Tottenham, Liverpool, Monaco and Watford.

Then there’s this, which would see Olivier Giroud take his robust 4 goals to Chelsea in exchange for David Luiz and his impressive 9 appearances:

Bachelor (there’s a goal after this if you aren’t into the show)

If there’s one thing we’re obsessed with at Dirty South Soccer, it’s Atlanta United. If there’s another thing some of us are obsessed with at the site, it’s The Bachelor/Bachelorette.

For those unfamiliar, the premise of the series is that a man or woman is on a journey to find love. by dating 30 people at the same time who all usually have jobs like “real estate agent” or “personal stylist” or “creative director” or “bartender” which really means they’re full time famehunters and are otherwise unemployed while they spend a lot of time on Instagram, live off of a trust fund, and are otherwise being a burden on their families (not really some of them are lovely people and are quite accomplished, but really why are they on this show?). All told, it’s estimated that when the Bachelor/Bachelorette makes a decision about who they are going to marry they have spent maybe maybe 24 hours alone with that person.

Anyway, here’s what happened on Monday’s show:

On this episode, Arie took the girls to Ft. Lauderdale, presumably so they could see where he would retire when he’s old enough to collect social security in a few years. He took Chelsea on a one on one to look at cars from the 1930s so she could see some automobiles from his childhood. Chelsea shared a heartbreaking story about the father of her child leaving her when the baby they had together was six months old. In response Arie muttered some stuff, grunted a few times, and groaned. It was truly touching to see him emote and connect with her about her pain while he thought about racecars.

On the group date Arie tried not to throw his back out bowling along with 10 of girlfriends. Krystal professed her desire to not fight for Arie’s attention at the start of the date. After saying that he would take the winning bowling team on a date to an after party, Arie changed his mind. Apparently Krystal didn’t take it well and melted down on the bus that Aire uses to cart all of his girlfriends around in. She decided not to go on the group date but rather than let her stew in her misery, since Arie is the absolute worst, he indulged her childish attention seeking and talked to her. To his credit, he left her in the room to stew in her misery while he made out with 9 of his girlfriends.

TWIST! At the end of the night, Krystal tried to come crawling back to Arie and his 9 other girlfriends, crashing the end of the date. The other girls basically kicked her off of the island and she went back to her room. At the end Arie did the really sensitive thing where he tells two of the girls how great they are and then gave the rose to someone else.

Next, Arie took Tia on a country date in the Everglades on a fan boat. Unfortunately Arie didn’t get eaten by one of the of alligators they saw. Tia, who we found out is a doctor of physical therapy, and Arie seem like a good match because as a physical therapist she has a lot of experience keeping older people like him mobile. At the end of their date, Tia told Arie she was falling in love with him, she’s the first of his 15 or so girlfriends to tell him that so far.

At the cocktail party we found out Arie wouldn’t eat human meat unless he was in a life or death situation while answering one of the girls’ bizarro questionnaire. Krystal was totally insufferable but decided to talk to all of the girls one at a time. They all asked her why she was still on the show. She didn’t crack and yell FAMEHUNTING but Arie’s 22 year-old girlfriend explained relationships to her in a more profound way than Krystal had ever understood. Meanwhile, Arie had some nice chats with some of his girlfriends I guess, but there’s 15 of them so I lost track of what happened.

Before the rose ceremony Arie, who only understands racecar driving, offered a beautiful soliloquy about how his relationship with Krystal is like a race that she’s ahead in. If you heard all of America booing last night at 9:56PM it was because Arie decided to give Krystal the green flag in pit row. Three of the girls went home and next week everyone is going to Paris.

Goal of the Day

All the best to Jacob Peterson, this is one of my favorite moments from last year. I watched this game alone in a sports bar in State College and scared half the staff when I jumped across the bar yelling at a TV that was on mute.

What to listen to

Check out Atlanta Monster. It is an intense telling of the history behind the Atlanta child murders in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The show gets into the racial and class elements of the story that are generally not really examined when discussing the case.