Hello,

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell. Today we have a very special Hello everybody and welcome to The Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

Today we have a very special episode I am very excited about.

Joining me is Leander Charlochans, soccer columnist at the Guardian U.S., senior lecture at Marist University, and author of The Long Game, U.S. men's soccer, and its savage four-decade journey to the top where thereabouts.

Leander, that was a lengthy introduction, but a worthy one, a fitting one, I would say.

Thank you. It's a lengthy subtitle to a book, but, you know, there was a lot to get in there, as indeed there was in the book itself.

We should get into, like, you know, the elevator pitch, but I do want to ask you, like,

how did you land on that as the, uh, the subheader?

It was tricky because you kind of want to like show that there is, you know, this big scope

to this national team.

You kind of want to talk about how it was this 40 year project really to get this team to

this place and to get it back to relevance in international soccer having gone completely off

the map and and sort of becoming a total afterthought and then there's a little nod to hunter s thompson

who's a writing hero

in there. And then you got to do a little bit of salesmanship and hoping for a little bit of humor.

And on the one hand, by saying or thereabouts, on the other hand, maybe I'm couching a little bit

and protecting myself from, you know, accusations that, you know,

being entirely at the top, well, how do you define that? And if this World Cup doesn't go as well

as the fans are hoping it will, you know, then I've sort of hedged for that a little bit.

I like it. I would have liked if you'd also gone with U.S. soccer is decadent and depraved, but that might have gotten you into trouble, even if it would have been a good Hunter S. Thompson reference. The thereabouts is always a tricky one when it comes to the U.S. Because it's a weird line in the World Cup of like we're probably not going to win the World Cup. I say maybe we'll win it in my lifetime. My co-hosts tend to roll their eyes at that one. But at the same time, making the World Cup being there consistently is in its own way, sort of being at the top. So, again, I think it's a really fitting title because it does kind of speak to where the program is at present. and it seems like for the foreseeable future as well.

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