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Yes.

This is Rebecca Loew or Rebecca Loewa if you listen to suboptimal radio and you are listening to Men in Blazers on the NBC Sports Network.

It's unbelievable!

Welcome to Men in Blazers pod special.

Our guest today is a gen 2 although he was born in Santa Rosa de Cabal Colombia. He knows the intricacies of North American soccer as well as anyone on the planet.

He's a graduate of Southern Connecticut State University. Come on you owls!

And he started his managerial career at the short-lived Staten Island Vipers. I miss the Staten Island Vipers of the A-League back in 1998.

It's the beginning of a story journey that's taken him to amongst other places the Chicago Fire, the New York Red Bulls in MLS in Puebla, in Liga MX earning him the reputation as one of the game's great soccer philosophers along the way.

In 2015 he accepted one is one of the most pressure packed jobs in all of global football.

A manager of the Mexican national team, El Tree. We welcome to the pod. A really welcome to the pod. Ahead of his teams friendly with Ireland, Thursday June 1st at 8pm at MetLife Stadium.

Then of course the cataclysmic showdown against the United States just 10 days later. Welcome to the pod the one and only. Mr. Juan Carlos Asu.

Thank you very much for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here and I really admire your energy.

Yeah I've only had half of the energy that you have when I want you in action when you walk into this room. I'm absolutely thrilled to be with you because to be kinded Juan Carlos.

Your career story. It's really rather inspirational, magical even. You strove to grind your way into the professional game as a midfielder in your native Columbia and Brazil.

You once said you realized around the age of 23 that you might not make it as a professional and you told yourself no this is not good enough. I have to prepare myself to be the best coach I can be I need to go and start from scratch.

Was that a frightening decision? Yes it was because I was playing professional in Columbia. I was on a comfort zone. I decided to quit all that and take my chances in US.

I pick up a country that could offer me full scholarship and through that scholarship not only achieve my academic degree which I did in exercise physiology and human performance and probably so of getting it from Southern Connecticut state.

Looking back I think it was the best decision for me to take now having said that I first came here as an international student. I went to Clark College in Dubuque Iow, a various small town and two things happened there.

I got the chance to see Chicago ball training in Illinois about an hour and a half from Dubuque. This is in the early 90s. Exactly. I went on what Michael Jordan, Scotty Peep and Luke Longley, Dennis Rotman and everything Mr Jackson did was through the game itself. So I applied to football and B when I first moved to New York because my visa expired.

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