Welcome to the Scuff's podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Georgia. With me is Greg Velazquez in Iowa. We talk about US men's soccer. Michael Lewis is one of the deans of American soccer journalism, the founder of

Front Row soccer. He's covered eight World Cups, seven Olympics and all 22 MLS Cups.

He writes about New York City FC and the US national team for News Day

and pens a soccer history column for The Guardian.

For our purposes today he's attended World Cup qualifiers in Honduras twice

2001 and 2009 Michael thank you for agreeing to do this.

Glee to be on Adam thank you So first of all both of the qualifiers you

attended in Honduras were wins which is not always the case so do you consider

it your duty to your country to be at the match in San Pedro Sula next week?

Unfortunately, I have not been to any of the U.S. Games since 2009.

I wish I could be attending the this year's's game but I'll be watching it on

streaming our TV with like everyone else and write it off of that but there's nothing like being at a stadium to really get the atmosphere and the roar of the

crowd as the old cliche goes.

Yeah, I've been, you know, I've been sort of watching a lot of the old highlights and the roar of the crowd, I'm glad you mentioned that because the roar of the crowd reminds me a little bit of the roar you hear in the Camp New when Barcelona is playing that's like gutter do you know what I'm talking about that like almost guttural

Roar is the right word does Does that... No, you're absolutely right.

It's funny in 2009 and we were in a makeshift press box then for

this period so many American reporters at the game and we were literally sitting in the upper parts of the stands.

Fortunately with a roof so for rain that we were protected but I felt like we were back in a stadium in like in the

1950s or 1960s and that not to criticize anything about theo Stadium in San Pedro Sula Andorris.

I just got that time machine feeling and I said, wow, this is pretty cool.

This is what it must have been like because the fans and

if I could tell you a little story please they packed the stadium they were there for

...