Hello, hello and welcome everybody to the total soccer show. My name is Taylor Rockwell. Joining me today to talk about the U.S. Women's National Team, the She Believes Cup, the upcoming NWSL season, is Steph Yang. Steph. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me on again. Yeah. It's been a few months since last we chatted. Has this been your sort of, like, is this your downtime

when you get to relax a little bit more and then things back up or do you stay busy?

I thought it would be a downtime. You said that so sadly. Oh, no. And in a way it was, there

were little pockets here and there, but there's actually so much has been happening so much in this

off season. You know, it's kind of like it's good to be busy, especially in our business,

but at the same time, I would love to not be busy. So it's one of those like monkey paws

things, I guess.

What percentage of the stories that you're writing, like, do you actually get to enjoy writing versus are about like coaches being terrible people or like governmental malfeasance or whatever it might be?

Like, do you get to write pieces that you actually enjoy that are actually fun? Recently, the balance has been really tipped negatively. And this is

something that I've talked with about with a lot of colleagues, which is we would love to write

fun, happy stories about NWSL and women's soccer in general. But right now, people aren't doing fun, happy things.

But I did get to just publish actually a Q&A with Sam U.S. and Len Williams, who have their own

podcast called Snacks, aren't on the KC. Current. And that was actually really fun. I was like,

oh, this is why I originally wanted to cover soccer. This is really, really enjoyable and it's kind of like a

little breath of relief. Hopefully the rest of 2022 will take a cue from that. What's their podcast

called? It's called Snacks. It's on the Just Women Sports Network. It's kind of like a more

casual slice of life lifestyle sort of podcast. But if you want to just hang out with two amiable soccer

players, it's a pretty good vibe. Oh, all right. I am I am very, very into that because I was watching,

just before we started, I was watching the thing that the, that US put out on Twitter about, like,

the different players trying to feel objects with blindfolds on. And Sam and Christy knew us are the best, but Lynn Williams was pretty hysterical in there as well. So that seems like a good listen. I'm into that for sure. Yeah, not everything has to be so like, oh, it been used as awful all the time. You need sometimes the laid back vibe. So it's a good little respite. All right. Well, we've got some good vibes hopefully,

but we'll see if that persists with the She Believes Cup. My expectation is that it will because

it's not the strongest of fields for the She Believes Cup. February 17th is when it kicks off,

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