The dirty little secret is that many actually equate this type of violence with a genuine, passionate, and authentic footballing culture.

As soccer continues to grow in the US, and we continue to pick and choose what to adopt from other leagues and cultures and countries,

we have to guard against the tendency to conflate violence with authentic soccer, passion, and culture.

Hello Sunshine, I'm Alexi Lollis, and welcome to the State of the Union podcast,

where we look at the beautiful game on and off the field through the lens of red, white,

and blue colored glasses.

As you heard, we'll be talking about the inconvenient truth

regarding violent fan behavior in the game.

We'll also have our Mossy Makes the Case segment.

We'll be answering your questions in our Ask Alexi segment and we will have our World Cup Date

segment and so much more. But as always joining me is my friend, my colleague, my

guiding light David Mossy, a soccer savant and a Fox soccer researcher and writer extraordinary.

How are you, Mossy?

I am good.

The Jersey of choice today is Corinthian, a Brazilian club.

It's a Ronaldo jersey, my favorite all-time player. He ended his career with them.

Do you have any other affiliation just other than the fact that it is Brazilian and Ronaldo play for them?

No, just Ronaldo. Are they in the annals of Brazilian soccer, one of the best?

Yes, and in fact this past weekend they won the Sao Paulo State Championship in dramatic fashion

over there.

Our tribal's Palmatas, so. Nice, did you have a good weekend what did you do I heard you went to a bar oh no sorry you went to a pub excuse me yes I went to the

Kingshead pub in Santa Monica to watch the Manchester City of Manchester United

...