Welcome back to bribes, Wendell or Steele.

Returning to the podcast today is Grant Wall, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated

and a special contributor for Fox Sports.

We're going to focus on power and governance and the upcoming election at the

U.S. Soccer Federation. Since Grant and I last spoke, Sunil Galati, longstanding USSF president,

and a member of the powerful FIFA Council, has decided not to run again. Let's start there,

Grant. What does Sunil's decision mean for U.S. soccer?

Well, it means there's going to be a big change. Sunil Golati has been the president of U.S. soccer for 12 years, and he's had a huge role in that position more than previous presidents have. I think it's fair to say he's actually totally changed the role of president. His predecessor, Dr. Bob Contagulia,

was more of a traditional U.S. soccer president as the role is outlined in the bylaws, which is

fairly circumscribed. You're the head of the board of directors. You're supposed to file an annual

report on the board's activities.

Sunil Gulati, in contrast, has had his hands in basically everything that U.S. soccer has done

over the last 12 years.

Now, Dan Flynn is the day-to-day CEO and general secretary of U.S. Soccer. That's a paid

position. But the position of president for U.S. soccer is an unpaid one. It always has been. And

Gulati changed that because he spends a lot of time in the position of U.S. soccer president.

And there's certainly a lot of discussion among the eight candidates for U.S.

soccer president in this campaign, which we'll get to here, that Gulladi had taken on too

much power in that presidential role.

And so people who have even worked alongside him in the U.S. soccer board like Carlos Cordero,

the vice president, who is one of the candidates in this election,

have said publicly that he's going to make the president's role, if he wins,

...