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

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about some Americans in Action this past weekend.

To do so, I'm joined by a fellow who already has all the knowledge about Americans in MLS.

So I figured it only makes sense to have him know

everything about Americans abroad as well. It's Joe Lowry. Hi, Joe. Oh, Taylor, you are holding me to a

high standard. I would do my best to clear that hurdle. Yep. Just knowing everything about every

American playing soccer anywhere at any given time. I feel like that's a fair assignment for you.

Very doable. Yeah. No, I got it. I got it. Well, let's simplify your task a little bit. We are going to incorporate some MLS players going forward. Today, it's all about Americans abroad because it was an eventful weekend for some, less so for others. There were several players who did not feature likely because they're returning to their clubs from International Duty.

So that would be Weston McKinney, Tyler Adams, Luca Deloere, Matthew Hoppe, and Shaq Moore.

Christian Pulisic and Giorana also did not play still dealing with injuries.

And we have the sad news from Roger Gonzalez that Giorana is likely to be out for the November World Cup qualifiers due to injury or the slowness of his recovery from that injury.

So that is at time of recording, as far as I know, still just a report.

We don't know that officially, but that seems to be the way it's trending, Joe.

No, Buono, Taylor, no pointo at all.

I did not think that these two injuries, I'll expand this to Polisic here in this conversation. I didn't think that these two guys would be out for as long as they were, right? I'm thinking about Polisic specifically, I remember in that game, he goes down injured and he tries to come back on and play against Honduras. And obviously that didn't go well. he didn't look like he was ready to play.

But I didn't think these were going to be as extreme as play against Honduras. And obviously that didn't go well. He didn't look like he was ready to play.

But I didn't think these were going to be as extreme as they were. Tuchel's come out and said stuff about Policic and how his recoveries had some setbacks along the way. And so both of these guys, if they're out for November, and we don't know that for sure. But if they are, those are big misses, man. Those are real absences.

And the U.S. was good enough in the October window that we spent plenty of time talking about. They were good enough to get some solid results in those games, obviously with a mixed performance in the middle of that window. But lacking depth up top is a bit of a challenge. And I think the U.S. is in a position now where they're lacking a bit of depth in those spots and missing a couple of those key players that also happen to play those spots in Pulisick and Raina. That's not ideal. It's not. And it's not even just depth. It's like name brand depth at that. Because if you are Mexico and you're looking at a potential starting 11 for the United States and how to deal with it, having Pulisic and Raina on that roster as potential threats, I think changes your calculation a little bit. And so it'll be a difficult task for Greg Burrhalter to continue to find ways to get results or find ways to get results, depending on your perspective, with the

attacking options he has. And then for Mexico, I think that probably just builds a little bit

more confidence. Now I'm going into, like, maybe it builds too much confidence, and it's actually

a strength. That's a fun way to spin that one. But I am sad just because it often feels like

...