Hello, Sunshine. I'm Alexi Lollis and welcome to the State of the Union

podcast. We look at the beautiful game on and off the field through the lens

of red white and blue colored glasses. Joining me as always, my friend, my colleague,

my guiding light, David Mossier soccer savant

and a fox soccer researcher and writer extraordinary.

We come to you after the US has just bombed out of the 2023 Women's World Cup.

They could not get it done against Sweden despite playing what I think everybody would agree

was their best game of the tournament. Mossy initial thoughts as I said I think that even somebody who does not particularly

like this team would have to look at this and at least in this moment for this, what 120 minutes, this was the best that we have seen.

Now, I don't think anybody necessarily was surprised that the United States lost to Sweden in this World Cup, but the manner in which

they lost it I think is surprising.

It's a weird one because the performance was great.

They were the much better team.

It's an absolute travesty that they got knocked out.

So it feels like a weird night to be hammering them, but then you take a step back, big picture, going out on the

round of 16 is a massive failure. It's a travesty in what sense?

In terms of the balance of play. Yeah they were the much better team. They ran into an all-time great

goalkeeping performance by Musovitch, the save on

Lindsay Horan in the second half. Because Lindsay got all of it and it was headed

right for the corner. Is one of the best you will ever see at this level and then

there was another one on an Alex

Morgan header and lots of other ones too. She was absolutely incredible. She is the

...