The Daily Dirt February 8, 2018: Sea cone, kits, and data

We did it fam, we cracked Darren’s tweet about who Atlanta Untied is signing to replace Carmona. It was a joint effort between the DSS staff and The Internet.

It’s obvious that something is going on:

What do you see?

Soccer players

No... what do you See?

Some cones?

What else?

An... an anagram?

WHAT ELSE?

A boat on water?

Might be time for some drastic measures. At this point I’ll take anything. PLEASE SIGN A DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER. #SignMarcone

This actually makes a lot of sense as a target. As Joe mentioned in his scouting post, he is a former teammate of Miguel Almiron at Lanus and would add a really valuable physical presence to the Atlanta midfield.

Anyway, onto the Dirt...

Domestic

Here’s a cool bit of beautiful data that shows the age distributions of every MLS team from Steve Fenn. Atlanta United is the 2nd youngest team behind FC Dallas and Houston is the oldest with Minnesota, even with all those draft picks, is second oldest.

The USWNT will take on Mexico in April playing in Houston, Texas.

We’re going to dump on Sporting Kansas City in due time come part 2 of the Western Conference haters guide, but so far they’ve been really successful at not signing a striker in the off season ... unless they coax Kenwyne Jones to un-retire. I’m sure they have a plan and aren’t just wildly stabbing at nothing after selling Dom Dwyer.

Telemundo and Copa90 are launching a bilingual content network for the 2018 World Cup and beyond. This seems like a cool idea and a way to, maybe, get American fans who don’t typically follow soccer in Latin America more engaged with teams from there.

Atlanta United is hiring apparently... just saying, if they need someone who has mastered MS Paint, I did submit my portfolio.

International

This is pretty cool. Check out this video from Spanish outlet El Dia Despues - Real Madrid’s season is going poorly, this gets into some of why that is (translations for their videos can be found here also).

The Nigeria World Cup kit is sick

The 2014 World Cup stadium built for Recife stands largely empty most game days. It should be a warning for Russia in 2018 writes Kaspar Loftin of iNews.

Virtual

This is actually a neat story from the Gizmodo Media Group, maybe they should let Janet Garcia cover soccer on Deadspin instead of... eh, never mind. My Grandiose Quest To Play (and love) FIFA’s Most Underappreciated Teams really gets to why the video game franchise has remained popular for so long. It’s a good read even if she didn’t seem to find a way to make Scunthorpe United win the World Cup.

A double virtual feature. David Rudin for the site USgamer has a commentary on the limits of Football Manager on understanding the human side of the game and what it says about the relationships between bosses and employees.

Goal of the day