Under his breath, he just said, of course the World Cup. Well, no, that should be your answer at this point.

This also comes on the heels of Mauricio Pochititino very publicly castigating Tim Wea and saying,

you should be focused on one thing and one thing only. All right, well, the same should apply to Maricio Pozzatitino.

The only thing that should matter,

and the most important thing in your life,

should be doing well in the World Cup.

... Hello, Sunshine. I'm Alexi Lalas, 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. This show will be talking Pochitino's future, U.S. men's national team power rankings, Polisic and McKinney transfer rumors, Tyler Adams return, college soccer reality, Olympic takes, MLS valuations, and so much more. But first joining me as always my friend, my colleague, my guiding lights, David Mossy, a soccer savant and a Fox Soccer researcher and writer extraordinaire. Mossie, how you doing on this? What are we looking at here? Hold on. Let me put my cheaters on here. Wednesday, February 11th in the year, 26. I'm doing well. The weather was a pleasant surprise today. It was supposed to rain, which it did

a little bit in the morning, but it actually turned into a beautiful day.

You know, us even just discussing the weather, let alone being critical or down about the

weather over here, I shy away from that given what's going on in the rest of the country here.

But I did talk to my mom, who I know you talk to probably more than I do today.

And she had seen that it was very nice weather here relative to where she is out on the east coast over there.

At the risk of being geriatric in our content here, have you ever stra you know, strained your back, pulled your back,

thrown your back out or anything like that? I have not, thankfully. You haven't. It'll come at some

points. I turned, so I have a music studio at my home and on my left-hand side is my guitars. And so

I turned to grab my guitars whenever I want to record something. And I

grabbed a guitar. It's a less paul. And for those that know guitars, less pauls are very heavy.

I grabbed it with my left hand. And, you know, my upper body strength is not what it used to be

evidently. And so I tweaked my back here. It's killing me. But I'm going to power through the show here on your incredible energy and plenty of Advil over there.

You want to let the folks know anything? Because is this a new sweatshirt that you're wearing?

No, I've worn this multiple times in the pod before.

...