Welcome everybody to Soccer 101.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and I am so very incredibly excited for this episode because we are continuing our series talking about the domestic leagues of nations that have qualified for the 2026 World Cup.

We've had a whole other round of teams joining us, Graham, including Uzbekistan.

Yeah, I'm glad you are excited because I am definitely

a little bit nervous for this one. Is it the one you've known the least about going in? Like,

and we've covered Iran, we've covered New Zealand, but I think this is the one that I had,

like I don't think I could have named you a Uzbek club before this. You do a bit more with the soccer dispatch and such.

Yeah.

Well, that's the only reason that I would say I knew a little bit more about Uzbek football

than Iranian football, Iranian football, because I did a newsletter on Uzbekistan

qualifying or they were on the brink of qualifying for the World Cup when I did the newsletter.

But I think in this series that we're doing, Taylor, there are like some leagues in countries where

I have pre-existing knowledge and others where I don't. And New Zealand springs to mind as one that

I didn't really know anything about their league before I started researching. And I was nervous

for that episode. But at least I had like

some cultural reference points like I know I know flight of the concords I've seen crowded

house live but today I don't even have that cultural grounding for Uzbekistan so this is a

entry into a new realm for me yes a quick perusal of the celebrity from Uzbekistan gave me, like, chess players,

concert, like instrument players and MMA fighters, I think, seems to be the general grounding there.

Yeah, I don't have a ton of familiarity with former Soviet Central Asian republics. My wife, I think I mentioned

this on the show before, really wants to go to Uzbekistan. I think that relates to their

role with the Silk Road and with the Mongols and the Mongols wiping out, I think two very important

...