I kind of wish that more of our players and more of our quote unquote more talented players

had even half of Christian Roldan's fight and attitude.

This was a huge, huge game for Haji Wright.

I think he's going to be in the stable of strikers that Poititina was going to look to.

I don't think that anybody looked at this team that was put out here today and said,

if the World Cup started today, this is what we're going with.

But I think that there's a lot of positives.

Hello, Sunshine. I'm Alexa Lollison. 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 is yet another special instant reaction live show following the U.S. men's national team friendly versus Australia,

which just concluded with a 2-1 victory for the good guys.

Again, the World Cup is 240 days away.

But first, join me as always my friend, my colleague,

my guiding lights, David Mossy,

a soccer savant and a Fox soccer researcher and writer, extraordinary.

Mossie, how you doing on this? What are we looking at here? October 14th in the year 2025. I am doing well. The big question everybody is wondering about, given the way you started our last podcast, is did you care about this game tonight? Yeah. So if you listen to the show or you tuned in just for the one show, you will know. And if you don't, I'll just give you a real quick synopsis.

Your is truly. I feel like I am pretty bullish and excited and energetic about the team, even when it's not doing well.

And I just found myself in this state of malaise after the game, questioning why I should care,

given all of the excuses, given all of the angst and a little bit of the way that I have been

irked about the way Marisa Pochitino has gone about it. I, look, winning is always going to make you feel better, but again, I am left after this game asking myself, okay, well, there's a litany of excuses, right? It wasn't the full team. We're missing four or five potential starters. Balligan didn't start. Christian Polisic only played 20 minutes. We have Christian Roldon.

Is Christian Roldon going to be starting for us in the World Cup?

You might.

Listen, but I don't think that anybody looked at this team that was put out here today and said,

...