Hi, I'm Grant Wall, and welcome to the Planet Football Podcast. Just a quick reminder, it's a huge help if you

subscribe, rate, and review the podcast. Today, S.I. Brian Strauss joins me to talk about whether Manchester City has lost its mystique.

Whether Toronto in the New York Red Bulls can make the Kankakaf Champions League final,

plus more talk on MLS expansion, Zlatan Week 2, and why the heck

two Kankacaf countries announced they were supporting the World Cup 26 Bid of Morocco, of all things. Onward.

So let's bring in Brian Strauss from our nation's capital.

I'm here in New York as always.

Brian, how is your weekend man?

Uh, it was fine. I got nothing interesting to report. I did a little,

I did a little jog, I jogged a race. You ran 10 miles in a race. I walked a rate I didn't say I ran it.

You finished. I'm trying I'm trying to well I was going to say I was going to I'm trying to turn from a soccer player into a runner, but that's leaving out like the four years I spent like completely immobile on the sofa.

So, because for a while I didn't know what to do with my broken body and then I decided, oh, I should run because like they give you a metal

just for finishing. So I've been trying to do that and I'm okay like at the 5 k's like at the 5k distance

You can still run a little bit because soccer play I don't know how to I don't know how to pace right? In In soccer, you're interval sprinting and you're just racing after shit

and it's exciting.

So with the 5Ks, I won my age group in a race last year.

I'll usually finish in like the top 15 or 20% of the field,

which is okay.

But like the 10-miler, I was worried I was gonna get in Zamboni.

You know, they come up in the back and if you're too slow.

So it was like definitely a bottom 20% finish.

But they still give you a metal and a bottle of water until you congratulations with a smile on their face and there's next to no ridicule.

...