Welcome to the Scuff Podcast where we talk about US soccer. Bell's here. This is the last of Sanjay Sujantho-Kumar's work for us in the past week.

He did a lot of good work, interviews with Luca de la Tore and Joe Scali,

and then this one with John Tolkien.

He also provided us with a bunch of audio from the Mix Zones after the games against Mexico

and Canada.

We hope to get a lot more output out of Sanjay in the coming months.

Give him a follow on Twitter, The Real Kumar. Also in the show notes will be the link to our

Patreon, which we hope you will explore. Here's Sanjay's interview with John Tolkien.

Welcome to Scuff podcast

Sanjay here and I'm joined by New York Red Bulls and US men's national team defender and

Shadden New Jersey native John Tolkien., thanks for coming on the five.

No problem, thank you for having me.

Does anyone actually call you John or is it always JMI?

And can you tell our listeners where that nickname came from?

Yeah, so very few people still call me John. If I'm in a room and somebody says

John, like it won't register with me, you have to be looking me in the eyes. But yeah, JMI is what I've been called my whole life and it's short for John Michael.

And when I was very young, my uncle, I was just like, J-Mai, and it just clicked and ever since then yeah it's like my it's like my name now

Let's get into the heart any questions right away

Who cuts your hair?

We have a team barber. Harry El Salazar. Everybody should check him out. He's the best.

Yeah, he cuts my hair and he always has ideas for me and it's perfect because that's stuff I kind of like. I love trying new things with my hair so you have much respect for him.

Which hairstyle has been your favorite so far and why?

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