Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velazquez and

Des Moines. We talk about US men's soccer. The Domestic League is back,

League is back, has been back for a while now

with a group stage knockout round style tournament that you've all been

following to some extent. We're not going to say anything comprehensive about the

MLS's back tournament but we were able to scout a few players in it and want to talk about them. We also know more about the

World Cup qualifying format in Kankacaf than we did a week ago. Greg, why don't you start

with that

the Kanka Kaff World Cup qualifying format expert. I earned that title.

So, new format announced, hexagonal is out,

the Ocho is in, and obviously the context of why we have to change the World Cup format is not a happy situation,

but from a soccer sporting standpoint, in my opinion, the changes to the format are

extremely beneficial to the United States Defense national team.

Why beneficial?

I don't get that. So we know the old format. We knew we definitely know like the

how it runs the hexagonal six teams play each team home and away for 10 games. The timing of the

hex for this 2022 cycle was a big deal. It was different than past cycles and it really in my opinion was working against us in a lot of ways.

So the hex was originally scheduled to run from September 2020 to June 2021,

which means it would have actually wrapped up

a full 18 months before the World Cup in 2022,

in November.

Which is like a century in soccer time.

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