Welcome to the Scuff Podcast where we talk about US Soccer.

This is a quick primer for the general American sports fan who wants to get plugged into the U.S. men's national team ahead of the World Cup.

A few discerning scuffed podcast listeners

suggested we do this and said they'd pass it around to friends and family so we

thought that's a great idea and we're doing it. My name is Adam Bells.

With me is Greg Villasquez. We've been making the Scuff

podcast for almost five years now and we'll be talking about the World Cup a lot

over the next couple weeks. Greg, how you doing? Bells, I'm doing good.

Anybody who's listening, welcome to the party because that's what the World Cup is. It is a month-long celebration of soccer and just the entire globe.

Chaos and you know a lot of national pride and you know people living out the dreams

that they've had since they were little kids of playing at a World Cup.

So first two bits of housekeeping.

One, here's how the World Cup works because I think this is going to be...

Before we even get into the format of the World Cup like I just want to kind of

give a quick like a overview of what the World Cup actually is it's it's a

please once it's a once every four years tournament that captures the attention and

imagination of almost every single soccer fan in the world. So it's it's not

necessarily the best 32 teams in the world, national teams, but it is a representative

sample of teams from all over the world, countries from all over the world who send their best

players. And the way who send their best players.

And the way we get to the 32 teams is a like two-year qualification process.

Grouling.

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