Hello,

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show. My name is Taylor Rockwell and here with me today to talk Major League Soccer is a man who spends his downtime pondering the major questions of life. Like, why are we here? What's the sound of one hand clapping? And why exactly is the identity of the LA Galaxy yet to be determined? It's Joe Lowry. Joe, as I understand it, you have clear answers for those first two questions. The final one might take up a little bit more time. Yeah, that's exactly right. The first two are very straightforward life and one-handed clapping. We already all know the answers to those. Of course. The Galaxy is a little bit of a different question. Taylor, I see you've been doing some reading recently. Maybe, maybe. Maybe checking out Backheeled, as many people should, because Joe's got some really great pieces on there, so to do many other writers. But yeah, it's been a nice insight into Joe away from the show about the things that Joe is interested in in covering. And also, you're just a very good writer. You write like clear, concise, but also creatively. And I very much enjoy your work, my friend. Oh, thank you, Taylor. Yeah, the insight into what things I write about and enjoy is just American soccer, which is the scope of the site. So if that's your cup of tea, then I think Backhill might be the spot for you. There you go. Well, we are going to talk Major League Soccer on today's episode. First, we should do some housekeeping, some catching up for sorts. We've had plenty of people talk about the Concacaf U20 tournament that is currently underway. We have not talked about it very much, somewhat because we've been busy, somewhat because various hosts have been on vacation and on the road, but also because it's a confusing tournament in which I think when I first floated this idea to you, Joe, but should we talk about this tournament? I think your response was we definitely can. I mean, they just won 10-0, so I don't know how much we can take away from that one. Well, sure, and it's weird because that take from me didn't actually age all that well, because the USU20s opened up the Conca Caffew 20 championship with a 10-0 win over St. Kitts. And then they go in and draw Canada 2-2 in the second group stage game, which was last night. They have Cuba in the third game of the group stage. this is, parts of this tournament are interesting. I'll start with the parts that are kind of weird and not so interesting. So first of all, this is far from a first choice U20 group for the U.S. at least, which is kind of exactly what you want. Ricardo Pepe, not involved. A lot of other top young U.S. players aren't involved. There's still plenty of talent. Diego

Luna, who just made a move from El Paso to RS.L. From U.S.L. to MLS is involved.

Cade Cowell, Caden Clark, lots of really talented players are in this team, but it's not quite

a first choice squad. So that's one kind of bummer about this tournament, but there are a couple

of really fascinating parts about

this too. So the main purpose, at least in the past of the Concaf U20 championship, has been

to qualify teams for the U20 World Cup. It makes sense. Concaf to World Cup, that's the usual

transition. And that will be happening in this tournament. The final four teams that are left

standing in this tournament will go to the 2023 U20 World Cup in Indonesia.

But that's not the only or even the biggest tournament that the U.S. can qualify for by winning this or at least advancing far enough in this U20 championship.

The final two teams, so the winner of the two semifinals, will go to the 2024 Olympics.

So this could be the U.S.'s chance, Taylor Rockwell,

to sort of exercise some of those Olympic qualifying demons that we've seen over and over again

and actually get to the Olympics. It's kind of anticlimactic in that way. It's likely not a lot of

the same players that would be on an Olympics roster should the U.S. make it there after winning

this or getting far enough in this tournament. But still, there is a reason for people to be paying attention

to this team and to this tournament. But the competition level is something I'm still not

entirely sure about. Yeah. And I think what we can promise is that if the United States does not

advance, which seems almost impossible at this point,

we will definitely talk about what went wrong.

But then we will probably talk about this tournament more as we get to those later rounds,

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