Hello,

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

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and I'm excited to be back on the program after missing our first weekend review of the new season.

Joe Lowry, were you able to rein in the Scotland and Wimbledon chat in my absence?

You know, there was a lot of talk about, quote, the barks being back, the barclays being back, all of those things to the point where we had folks on our Discord asking, like, what is a cold can of Barclays? Which completely fair, definite Britishism is happening on the show yesterday. Taylor, I'm glad we have our American quota of two back together today. You let Barks happen, though? Looking back, I think it was simply just Barlays, but maybe it was barks. I don't know. I'm kind of into barks. I'm not decided. I don't know. I've been spending too much time with them. Taylor, I'm glad you're back on that you're feeling a bit better and that you're here to energetically still talk through Americans with me. I certainly am. I have the cough button at ready for whenever it's necessary.

But since it's a new season, Joe and I can only get to talk about Americans most of the time

on the rest of the show. So today we're talking about them for the entirety of the episode.

We've each got a list of five or so, maybe 10 for Joe. I'm not quite sure, players. We are most excited about for the upcoming campaign. For whatever reason, we're going to go back and forth and see where there's overlap, where there isn't, and what might be in store for Americans abroad in the 2024-2020- season. Joe, do you feel like getting us started or are there any other points of clarification before we dive in?

No, you've set the table beautifully.

There's like all the fancy forks.

There's the dessert fork on the table.

There's a salad fork.

The candle's looking quite nice.

No, you did a great job.

I will get us rolling here.

Work from the outside in, as always, what it comes to fancy dinner settings.

This guy has had a fancy dinner or two, I can tell. I'm going to kick us off with Haji Wright, who I've been thinking about more and more recently as someone who may have something to gain from Mauricio Pachitino. Again, we're still waiting on Pachitino being finalized, and finally U.S. soccer and him dotting eyes and crossing T's on his contract. The recent reporting is that Chelsea is still kind of holding things up, maybe not intentionally, but there's some financial things that have to be worked through from Pachitino's contract with Chelsea that they're still paying him for after relieving him after only one year of his duties. And once those things are settled, he will be announced as the new USM and team manager. So so far, Taylor, our episode last week has up, and we will do more when it's relevant moving forward. But I've been thinking more and more about players that have something to gain from Pachitino. And I don't know if Haji Wright truly is one of those guys or not. I don't know that he's a great stylistic fit for what Pachitino wants to do in terms of wingers coming inside, typically in fullbacks overlapping. Hadjou Rite has had a lot more success playing as a left winger, which is his new role, by the way, for club. He's had a lot more success staying a bit wider and then cutting inside onto that right foot to play almost as a more pure inverted left winger. He's lanky. He can cut inside and do all that kind of stuff. But what I keep coming back to, Taylor, is that the winger depth of the U.S. is brutal, brutally shallow right now, I guess I should say. Brendan Erickson isn't a starter for leads, and he's not a pure winger necessarily anyway. Tim Way has scored a banger and got hurt yesterday, seemingly in the exact same moment. I think the injury came a bit before that left footer.

But he's out for at least 10 days, I think is when Yuves said they were going to re-evaluate him. And is not necessarily a pure 1-V-1 dribbly kind of winger anyway. Giorena doesn't play for Dortmund, and he's not a pure winger. Polisic is playing as a 10 for A.C. Milan. We talked about that on the weekend review yesterday.

He's not playing as a winger,

although I do think that is clearly his best role for the U.S.

Haji is playing as a winger, although I do think that is clearly his best role for the U.S. Haji is playing as a winger in the championship. That's a low bar, but he's doing it. And he's scoring goals under Mark Robbins for Coventry. Last year was his first as a winger, has real success, 16 goals, six assists in 3,000 minutes. I'm wondering, could he get better conceivably this year as, yeah, okay, sure he's 26. We don't tend to see a lot of players meaningfully improve at that age. But also, he's now just in year two of a completely different role in the attack, one that he took to quite well in year one. So maybe Haji is the rare exception to improving when you're basically already in your prime. Maybe he's not. But I know for sure that the U.S. need goal scores. And I know for sure that there aren't a lot of wide players who are doing that right now. And maybe, Taylor, just maybe Hajie is going to be one of those players. I think he is a perfect player to start with because of what he is doing for Coventry City and what he has

been doing that he picks right back up and is scoring goals and creating opportunities to start

...