Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

And with me today to talk some Major League Soccer and a little USL as well is a man whose doctor says he does not need a backiotomy.

It's Jeff Ruder of The Athletic.

Hello, Jeff.

Hi.

And thank you for following me on Twitter.

This really meant a lot.

This happened like 20 minutes ago, and I've been tickled every day, so thank you for having me.

So I explain this to you like a little bit already in a panicked anxiety-induced state, but I will do it again here.

Like, we used to just use the Total Soccer Show account, so it was basically only times when I would text Daryl and be like, I shouldn't tweet this from the Total Soccer Show account, should I? And he's like, no, no, you should not. And then I would use my personal account. I've tried to have more of a balance these days, but as a result, I realize how few people I ever followed from my personal one. Like, I think at one point I only had like 26 people, all of whom I followed like nine years ago. So I've been updating it, but it does feel like a slow burn every single time when I'm like, hey, Jeff, we've known each other for years now. Want to be Twitter friends? So thank you for accepting that, though. I feel honored and privileged. Isn't that like such an unnecessarily stressful question, though, when someone approaches, I get this sometimes, where people will be like, hey, why don't you follow me on Twitter? And like, sometimes the answer is just like, I don't want to, right? And like, there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like, I wouldn't spend time with you. It's just like, I need to like keep my Twitter feed either as streamlined as possible or I have a lot of redundancies of voices and your best stuff. This is specifically now talking about people who work in soccer, frankly, which is, we're off to a great start. It's just like, your best takes show up on my feet anyway. Everyone will retweet you. So it's just Twitter. Like, it's just Twitter, right? I'm not trying to be contrarian. I don't think anyone has ever asked me, why don't you follow me? Is that a question you get? Like, I feel like you're, are you an in-demand Twitter? Is that what it is? Apparently. Yeah. I mean, this happened more when, like, the world was open and I would walk into a bar and people would be like, oh, I'm going to follow you on Twitter. You should follow me back. And I'm like, ha ha. Oh.

That may happen to me as well in bars.

I just might not remember it because it was in bars.

That could be.

That could well be.

Well, Jeff is here, as I said, to talk some major league soccer.

But obviously, you cover USL pretty extensively as well.

We had USL League 1 already kick off USL championship kicking off this weekend.

It made me wonder, I did ask Jeff if he doesn't mind me asking a very broad question before we start recording, and here it is.

Are there USL teams that you think are particularly well run?

Because you see a lot of coverage of jersey releases and new teams launching and plans plans for the future but some of those end up

happening some of them do not so for you jeff who has the experience who are the teams that you think

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