There are players who could give two you know what's about being a captain. It doesn't phase them or change them by any stretch of the imagination. I would think that West McKinney is that type of player. And as a matter of fact, I welcome to the State of the Union podcast, where we look at the beautiful game on and off the field through the lens of red, white and blue colored glasses.

This show will be talking, oh yeah, MLS with the season upon us.

Champions League, Concaf Champions Cup, Vinnie Jr., MLS Jersey Power Rankings,

U.S. Men's National Team Identity, Bodo Glint,

Klinsman Burrhalter Legacy, and so much more.

But first joining me as always my friend, my colleagues. power rankings, U.S. men's national team identity, Bodo Glint, Klinsman Burrhalter Legacy, and so much more.

But first, join me as all as my friend, my colleague, my guiding lights, David Mossie,

a soccer savant and a Fox Soccer researcher and writer extraordinaire.

Mossie, how you doing this?

What are we looking at here?

Wednesday, February 18th in the year, 26. I'm doing well, especially because our studio is finally completely decorated,

including the long-awaited bobbleheads.

The brains behind this was Aaron Schechter. She did an unbelievable job.

You can see front and center here, each of our bobblehead. Oh, look at this.

Mosty's got a bobblehead.

Now, this is a hairy version of Mossy.

I asked you before we came on air if you would ever had a beard and you said no.

So this would be multiple days worth of growth in terms of this bowels So what happened was Aaron showed me the picture that she used. And it was a day where I was pretty scruffy. She tried to recreate the right level of scruff. It looked a bit odd, just some dots on my face. So she thought it would be better to just commit to the beard look, which is fine. She took a little bit of a dramatic license here, but with the hat, the hoodie, everything

else is perfect.

It all looks wonderful. They did a wonderful job. I heard, you know, that there was plenty of back and forth about my hair and the color and the texture and everything. It all looks great. We're still going to add to it. We got Stryker here. We got, you know, one of my old, old albums.

I don't know where the hell that came from.

We got the mascots from, like I said, 94, mascots from upcoming 2026. We got the ball. We got all sorts of stuff. Yeah, we got a little thing here with me and my short shorts and stuff like that. So it's coming together, my friend. I don't think this is done,

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