The reality is that when negotiating a deal in Major League Soccer, it often seems that a player is better off jumping on a plane, fly into an international destination, juggle them the ball a few times in the airport terminal, and then coming back.

I've even benefited from this phenomenon in the past. But in order to truly be a, quote,

League of Choice, existing or young players starting out their careers, they need to be incentivized to choose to stay.

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 with the lens of red white and blue colored glasses.

As you heard, we'll be talking about the evaluation of MLS players in 2019.

We'll have our Mossy Mix the Case segment.

He's going to talk a little bit about

VAR in the Champions League. We'll be answering your questions in our

hashtag Ask Alexi segment including some Weston McKinney talk and so much more.

But first as always joining me 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. I am entertaining the parents this week. They're

in town. Yeah. Are they giving you any time alone at all or is this 24-7?

24-7. My mother though very pleasantly surprised by my appearance because as I've

mentioned to you this camera is very unforgiving it makes us both look

fatter than we are and so my mother was expecting a lot worse.

So that's how she keeps tabs on you is by watching the video portion.

Correct.

All right, well good. It's better that way than the other way around, okay, when she has a false sense of who you are from watching it and then she sees you in real life and is dismayed.

That's good. You're not a Grammy Awards watch or anything like that are you?

No, I did not.

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