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

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and it is a Tuesday, which means it's time to talk Americans in Action,

a segment we formally, informally, called Americans Abroad.

And that's kind of what we're returning to this week because the transfer window is open.

We've got Americans that have already moved,

Americans that are rumored to move, and Americans that could do with a move, lots of moving.

As I said, here with me to talk about all that and more are two gentlemen. Up first, my fellow

American, a man who is becoming an unlikely expert on all things Belgian League. It's Joe Lowry.

That's the plot twist that no one expected for 2022, but here we are, Taylor Rockwell. It really has gone from like there's a couple players there. There might be 40 Americans playing in the Belgian League. If you said that, I would believe you. I don't think it's quite that high. But it does feel like there's a large amount of Americans making their way to Belgium. One might say too many, but really who might have judged, Taylor? I really don't know. All right. So we will get to the Belgian League, but first we should finish our introductions. Joining us is a man who we will slowly win over to supporting the United States and accepting that Tyler Adams should be world president. It's Graham Ruffin. Hi, Graham.

Hello, Taylor. Is today the day I become an honorary American? Do I need to pledge allegiance to a flag or something?

I mean, it just depends on how glowing you are about every single American player we discuss.

In actuality, I'm really excited you are here because I think we can have you be the official, like, what the heck are you two talking about?

Extract us from the weeds sort of figure so that when Joe and I are passionately discussing a third choice right back for a relegation threatened Belgian team, you can sort of be in there to say like, hey, guys, maybe we don't need to do a full 20 minutes on this one player. Maybe we can keep it moving a little bit. I think that can be a good role for you, Graham, but then evolving into, yes, an honorary American as well. This whole podcast is just going to be a test for me where you make up random names, and I have to guess whether those are real players or not real players, whether they are playing in the Belgian second division or not.

Joe, we should have done that.

We should have just thrown in some random like, Brayton Jadenson and see if Graham is aware

that they're real or not.

I'm really excited about Brayson Brown making that move over to Scotland.

He's on the running order, Graham. You didn't see that? Oh, no, I missed that one. All right, well, we will get to Bracin Brown and all of our other made-up players later on. Right now, we're going to talk about some confirmed moves. The big one that we've talked about a little bit, but not in-depth, would be Ricardo Pepe to Augsburg. A move that we did not see coming. We thought maybe it was going to be Wolfsburg, Joe. Instead, it's Augsburg paying out $18 million, or maybe $18 million euros. I forget which one. But either way, a lot of money spent on Ricardo Pepeby by Augsburg. Absolutely. Fabrizio Romano, I believe, had it at $20 million fee plus add-on.

So it's going to be a gigantic sale for FC Dallas within the context of how sales within

Major League Soccer usually go. This is a big move for Ricardo Pepe, and it's a big risk,

Taylor and Graham. I mean, this is timing-wise, a challenging time for any of these players to be moving,

but especially players that are on, not the cusp, because I think Pepe's moved a bit beyond

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