West Foot Forward: Cavan, Barton-backed chicken, and why we're going to hear more chants featuring the number 114

Welcome to West Foot Forward, a new Verde All Day weekly feature in which we escape the gravitational pull of Austin FC and explore various highways and byways of world soccer.

Happy Cap-Tie Cavan Day!

The U.S. men's national soccer team plays Peru in Orlando on Saturday afternoon, and that's notable for Cavan Sullivan getting the chance to play and get his first international cap for the senior team. He's being touted as a generational talent at age 16 — he turns 17 on Monday, bummer to have a birthday on a Monday — and he's igniting the Union's sudden turnaround in MLS.

(Their current 11-match unbeaten streak includes nine wins; they've managed to move from the East's basement to the No. 6 seed. To give you perspective on the level of turnaround this is, Philly only has 10 wins on the season total.)

Cavan's superpower, according to the excellent profile that The Athletic's Henry Bushnell wrote, is "nastiness," and "his mind is always going."

He won't be the only player Mauricio Pochettino brought in who might earn a first cap on Saturday, but he'll certainly be the most watched.

Decision is ... chicken!

Before this summer's World Cup, you likely knew referee Iván Barton as one of the most "main character energy" refs in Concacaf. That only increased with Barton being the first to give a red card for a player directing verbals at an opposing player with a hand over the mouth. Dubbed the Prestianni rule for the Benfica player who covered his mouth to deliver what was determined by UEFA to be "homophobic content" toward Real Madrid's Vinícius Júnior, it's meant to reduce racist and homophobic barbs from players by making it easier to bring lip reading into evidence and better suss it out.

While Paraguay's Miguel Almiron was slapped with the red card (in the group stage match against Türkiye) to perhaps forever sully his soccer biography, Barton became a widely-memed figure for his dramatic "Decision is red card!" declaration. That exultation got legs when DJ Tiscore turned it into a rave anthem pulling major Instagram views. (Tiscore even got a video response from Barton in a clip he — naturally — put up on Instagram. Barton said, "At first, I didn't like it because a ref doesn't want to be in the spotlight." But, after he saw all the excitement around it and the joy it brought people, he determined he loved it.")

Barton is making his own Instagram magic happen right now thanks to Salvadoran chicken chain Pollo Campesto, and we're aware of it thanks to Douglas Reyes-Ceron, who let Soccer Bluesky know that this commercial exists. It starts with an ominous voice intoning, in English, "This is your referee speaking," as a man in a black suit extends a hand (with just the hand and upper arm visible) to block a young woman from taking a bite of a chicken leg.

Barton then says, in Spanish. "Wait, there is a very clear mistake. You're missing the other half. In September, you don't eat halfway," before using the two-for-one meal deal's tag line, "Ivan por dos!"

Barton is all over Pollo Campesto's Instagram now, as well as the intro of this week's Emergency Podcast. I hope this goes well for him. I really do. I will still brace myself whenever I see him reffing in a match in which I'm emotionally invested in one of the teams involved, but this deep dive I got sent on makes me appreciate him more. (As a person.)

Get ready for the number 114

So, on Friday, a bombshell years in the making dropped — Manchester City was found guilty on 114 of 115 charges tied to the Premier League's financial regulations rules, for activities between 2009 and 2018, in which City became a Premier League powerhouse.

The Athletic noted, in its article:

The potential punishments are outlined in rule W.51 of the Premier League’s handbook, with a range of potential options for the panel to consider if City are found to have broken the rules.

Sanctions range from a reprimand and fines to points deductions — and even expulsion from the Premier League.

Any points deduction could be applied when the decision is made or retrospectively, raising the prospect of City being stripped of titles.

“I would expect that if there is a points deduction, it would be applied going forward,” James Hill, a legal director specialising in sports regulatory matters at Onside Law, told The Athletic in 2023.

“Generally, panels don’t like deciding titles in a court process. Doing it that way does not give a real tangible punishment to the club.”

It seems far-fetched that City would be stripped of points this season and be effectively taken out of the Premier League race before it really gets going ... or would it? In this post-Pep Guardiola era, maybe there's a desire to put City in a corner for the crimes of the past — though City's promising to appeal.

Do some quick Googling, and you'll see that some fans have already made note of the case before it got to this phase in its chants. Not surprisingly, of those who are chanting, "You cheating bastards, you know what you are," Manchester United fans seem to especially relish it. (One video I found had United fans chanting it as City players were exiting a team bus pre-match.)

Now, with 114 as a recognizable number that doesn't really figure into any other soccer discussion — like, you're not going to taunt Lebanon for being the current No. 114 team in the world in the FIFA rankings — I expect 114 to figure into anti-City chants as soccer fans remind City fans anew of the verdict. As we're on an international break, we won't see and hear it until October, but I feel like it's on its way.

Oh, and I see City's next match is Oct. 11 at Liverpool! Gathering that Liverpool fans don't seem to like City much!

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