The U.S. Men's Team failed to qualify for the World Cup.

But no other country may be better able to come to terms with a World Cup without the home team than the United States.

Our incredible size, ethnicity, and diversity mean our direct and

indirect connections and attachments to countries and cultures not the United

States will be front and center. Many will also discover teams this summer that speak to them because that's what a World Cup does.

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 the American soccer culture as it gets ready for a World

Cup without the home team. We'll have our Mossy without the Home Team.

We'll have our Mossy Makes the Case segment.

We'll be answering your questions in our Ask Alexi segment.

We'll continue with our World Cup Date segments

and so much more.

But first, as always, joining me my friend my colleague my guiding light

David Mossy he has returned a soccer savant and a fox soccer researcher slash writer

extraordinary how are you mr.y? I am good glad to be back. We missed

you last weekend. Getting Wally Pitt by a bowling guy would have been the ultimate indignity

but I was invited back this week which is good news although our producers made sure to tell me how great the numbers were for last week's pod.

Great numbers for the guest hosting of Rob Stone in for the State of the Union, but we did miss you, we did talk about you, and we did talk about soccer.

A little reminder, this is the last State of the Union podcast that we'll be doing from the United States before we leave this week for

Russia for the World Cup. Now don't worry you're going to get plenty of state of the

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