Welcome to the Scuffed Podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez and

Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Our guest today is Mike Waitala, the executive editor of Soccer America, and in my opinion the journalist responsible

for the most substantive work on issues of particular significance to me as a follower of U.S. soccer.

His interviews are must-read stuff.

He broke the story about the Youth Soccer Diversity Task Force that included almost zero people of Latino descent.

He's been closer to the Hugo Perez situation than most people.

He's doggedly highlighted the youth national team coaching

vacancy crisis and he just came out with another great interview. This one with

John Hackworth, the former US U17 coach you should check it out on

soccer America dot com and

subscribe it's they're doing incredible work and have been for longer than anybody

else Mike thanks for coming on the podcast oh thank you for having me and thank you very much for that very nice intro.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Let's start with the news of the day.

Sir Jeune Odests, as we all know, announced he's going to play for the USA. Iax actually announced it for him.

This was a big, as everyone knows, kind of a big question in the air. What's your

what's your reaction to that? Yeah obviously good news for the US national team

program. I think I would have predicted that he would lean toward the US you know the other factor would have been I'm sure he feels more Dutch than American and that he grew up

wanting to play on the Netherlands national team but I think there's a couple thing one is I think he'll know he'll be very confident of being a

starter Getting a lot of playing time he plays for the US you know the way that the Netherlands produces players

You have you know you don't know how many competitors he's going to have in the next few years. And I do believe a person like Sergio would there be a matter of loyalty as well because the US national team program gave him a chance.

He played in the U17 World Cup and the 20 World Cup and then he I'm sure he's built relationships.

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