Hello, hello, and welcome to the totalcer Show, a USM&T weekly edition of the Total Soccer show, hosted by me, Taylor Rockwell, and co-hosted by my friend and yours, Mr. Gio Lowry.

Is that what we've gone with today, Joe?

Well, so we're doing a decent bit of Giorina chat, as I'm sure everybody watching or listening already knows because of the title. There's been some news about G.R. And we'll dive into all that. And I do like to on our local recording software, like to make various Joe names that are tied into the soccer sphere. And G. Joe is what I was thinking. G. Joe. There it is. I thought, could I just get away with Giorina?

Because there's like a Giovanni Joseph kind of tie there.

I didn't ultimately feel great about it. And so I went with G. Joe Rana, which honestly, now that I've said it out loud, I feel even worse about. You shouldn't. You should feel even better about it because I've enjoyed it. I don't know if Georana smiles, but if he does, I think you'd get at least a slight smile out of him.

We are going to talk about the Geoerana situation at Thorntman.

We're going to talk about a few Americans playing in Europe. And later on, we're going to be joined by Mr. Paul Tenorio himself to talk a little USL Division I chat, amongst other things. But some news breaking there about USL's ambitions and MLS's reaction to it.

We'll get all those thoughts from Paul as Joe and I pepper him with questions.

For now, we are going to spend some time on the situation with Gio Raina because it's kind of the same as always, Joe, except for one story yesterday that turned some heads.

Well, and I think that's, that's exactly right,

to be honest, Taylor. So there was a report yesterday from, here we go, everybody ready? I'm going to crack my, my knuckles here. Rur-Nachtrichton, I don't know. I feel like that was solid. Rur-Nock-Ricton. I don't think it was great, but I think it was passable. They had a report that Barusia Dortmund have put Giorina on their quote unquote strike list, which sounds awesome. It sounds like the kind of thing that I want to be on because I'm going to get to be part of a really cool task force. That's not what this is about and it's not nearly that cool. Basically, they are, the report was that Dortmund are willing to listen to offers for Giorana this summer, which I'll be honest, is like zero percent surprising. The thing that I think we wanted to really talk about on this show, or the thing that we wanted to do on this show is to use that as an opportunity to talk into one of the most fascinating club situations of any USM&T player. And it's especially relevant because I think it's pretty clear for everybody to see, even if you're not as high on Giorina as I am, and I'm not sure many people are, he's a super talented player. And the U.S., less than 18 months away from a World Cup, needs really talented players. This is a good reminder, this report of just how perilous Giorina's club situation has been. and that's really impactful for the USM&, who would be better off, I'm sure, if Giorina was in a better spot.

So that's the reporting out of Dortmund. I don't think it comes as a great surprise to anybody.

I don't think you need to really even have your ears to the ground to realize that a guy who's not really playing for dormant and Gio's not really playing for dormant is probably on the way out or at least they're willing to have him go out if the right offer comes across. I believe his contract ends in 18 months' time, so at the end of next season with Dortmund, if that's the case, I can see Dortmund wanting to extract a little bit of value whatever they can get from Gio this summer before they can lose them for free next summer. So if we're like cross-referencing here, Joe, and you've gone with fascinating to describe the Giorina situation, would you add morbidly fascinating to that?

Because it's basically the hype and technical ability or presume technical ability of a player

combined with consistent lack of minutes, combined with off-field issues since breaking

through at such a young age. Is that what makes this such a unique and fascinating situation? I think so. 100% I think so, because Gio Raina is, we've seen this before. Like, this isn't theory. Giorina, when he's on the field for the U.S. men's national team, is a difference maker. He has taken over games in a way that no other central player for the United

States has taken over games. His ability to thread through balls in Nations League Final

Four, his ability to get on the ball and to control games. He is a talent. He's a huge talent for

this team. And there are multiple components to Giorana's problems. And only one of them that we

can really talk about with any semblance of authority. The first component we can't really talk about is his injury history, because the dude is never healthy. He's been injured. I think he missed 13 games already earlier this season, and he's missed game after game after game for club and country for years now. He's only really ever played one semi-full season of professional soccer. Injuries are a big part of that. The other part of that is something that we can, I guess, speculate on with a little bit more accuracy is that it seems like no coach actually wants to play Giorina. And where the line is blurred is, you know, is it because they're worried about his fitness or is it because the guy is not the most pleasant person to have around the locker room? I mean, we think that's probably part of it, right? When you think about the fallout between Giorina and Greg Beralta, this year, I mean, Nira Shaheen didn't play Giorina. Niko Kovach didn't play during his loan at Nottingham Forest. Giorina didn't really play towards the end of the Terzich era. He just isn't playing soccer. And that's not a good situation to state the absolute obvious. And for how talented he is, it feels like there's a lot of fruit left on the tree that's just not being picked here. I think that possibility of explanations is the thing that I continue to go back to as to why this is such an interesting situation. And I feel bad saying that about a person who is still very, very young, but seems to be at a pretty big crossroads. Which is crazy that he's 22. Exactly. And I think it's because, as you mentioned, he breaks through at such a young age. And when he does play almost 2,000 minutes for Dortmund, it's as a 17-year-old. and that's coming after he played almost 400 minutes for them, the season before that, as a 16-year-old. So he breaks through at this super young age, but from that point on, like, basically as an 18-year-old, he plays 400 minutes, as a 19-year-old at 600. As a 20-year-old, it's about 300 of the Bundesliga, 200 in the Premier League, and then this season, significantly fewer minutes.

And I think if you wanted to go with a footballing physicality explanation, the one that I think I've seen most often utilized is the idea that he comes in, gets an injury in the summer or is carrying an injury into

preseason, so isn't able to start the season either is maybe a couple weeks behind or

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