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

Des Moines. We talk about US men's soccer. Today our guest is Andrew Ericsson who for the last two years was the Columbus

crew beat reporter at the Columbus Dispatch. He moved on to other things

professionally since the season ended but he very kindly agreed to talk

about Greg Berhalter the next US men's national team coach to give us some

perspective on who he is what it's like to cover him as a head coach and

sporting director and hopefully give us a few

anecdotes about life with 3G. Andrew, thanks for joining me. Yeah, you bet. So you were a

pretty young reporter when you started covering the crew in 2016, if I'm not mistaken,

and Berhalter had already been in Columbus for three years.

What was your initial impression of him and how did you meet him the first time?

The first time I met him was as an intern with the Columbus's Bachelor in late 2015

when I was helping out in her playoff coverage. You know, getting started, it was 2017 pre-season, you know, kind of learning, you know, what made him tick, how he was was the coach how he dealt with the media

you know all that kind of stuff takes time I think for me coming in I came in

not knowing a ton about soccer not knowing a ton about the

intricacies of the game and you know came in wanting to learn more about it I

think I think that was that was good in that sense. You know he's able to break things down and

explain them even if it's not on the record you know he can pull out a whiteboard and kind of

explain why certain things work or why certain guys work in certain

lineups or formations.

So as someone who came in trying to learn more about the game, I thought he did a good job

and receptive to wanting to explain it to someone who was curious and

...