Welcome to the Total Soccer Show weekend, the show where we preview the biggest games of the weekend,

which sees the glorious return of domestic top-level soccer.

Woo, praise B!

And we're going to send you into the weekend with an interview with the USM&T legend.

Ooh, my name's Ryan Bailey.

Joining me today, Graham Rutherland's here. Hello, Graham. How are you? Are you looking forward to the weekend? I am looking forward to the weekend, although not as much as it sounds like you are looking forward to the weekend. I was going to bring that up, Ryan, before you mentioned it. We're back to actual pure soccer now, not that plastic international stuff. real soccer for real soccer for real fans, real international multi-club ownership groups, you know, all the good people in club soccer. That's the kind of soccer that you enjoy.

Yes, that's right, Graham. Now you've cast my views into doubt here. I heard it described as a soft launch back into domestic soccer with like FA Cup quarterfinals and stuff. Port Vale, Chelsea, that kind of thing. Yeah, it didn't quite dawn on me that that was happening until Spurs appointed Robert de Zerbe and I was like, oh, their first game, oh, nope, they've got to wait another 10 days for his first game in charge. That'll make all the difference, of course.

Spurs will be fixed after those 10 games on the training ground with a guy who likes to get his players and headlocks. Everything's going great at that club. Yay! Everything's going great with Joe Lowry's all. Hello, Joe. Hey, I am so happy that we got club soccer returning round. I'm mostly just happy for you across the board. But really, I'm thrilled.

We got Breck Shea on the program today.

USM and T.

Oh, wait.

You meant a different one?

Did you mean a different one? Well, actually, so Mr. Taylor Rockwell, our quiz master extraordinaire, is not here to do regular quiz. And none of us are up to the task of writing such incredible questions as Taylor. So I've actually prepared a very small quiz for you right now, Joe.

Oh, good, good.

It's one question and it's a yes or no answer.

Okay.

Would you like to hear...

No.

Graham, I've got a question for you.

It's a yes or no answer.

Yes.

Would you like to hear an interview with USMNT legend Eddie Pope at the end of this episode I want to change my answer can I change it? Yeah let's go for it yes let's hear that I haven't heard this yet I'm very excited to hear it later excellent I think that's a good substitution for the quiz to have a the Pope on the feed should we just declare a three-way tie for the quiz then, since Taylor's not here? Just everybody, you know, honorable, we'll call it even. Yeah, but I'm more of the winner because I did the interview. Should we say that? Right. Lesson luck is a train too hard. I'm going to appeal to calf for that, to be honest. Very good. All right, look out for that later in the episode, dear listener. And before we get into our games of the weekend, though, I want to tell you about patreon.com slash total soccer show. It is where you get our bonus content, bonus episodes, bonus video, access to our Discord server, access to the TSS Scouting Network, where you can be assigned a player or assign yourself one for this season.

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