Hello, Sunshine, I'm Alexi Wallace, and welcome to a very special edition of the State of the Union podcast

where we look at the beautiful game through the lens of red, white, and blue colored glasses.

Joining me, as always, my friend, my colleague, my guiding light, David Mossy, we have dressed up today because, my friends, we are exactly a year out from the World Cup in Qatar 2022 and maybe

even more importantly this is our 200th episode so congratulations to us and thank you to everybody out there that watches,

download, subscribes, and everybody here that works so hard to bring it to you each and every week.

My friend, we got all dressed up here. We're looking good as you are. I can't believe you're in khakis.

Speak for yourself. Those that know me know this is my regular attire wherever I go.

Well, you look good. You look good. All right, so we're a year out from guitar I'm going to take you back a few years

and we're going to talk to a bunch of people by the way on this show we got all sorts of guests

including you know if you're great Kobe Jones and Chris Wondolowski,

Stu Holden is going to join us and we're going to talk about a bunch of

different things. But I want to take you back a number of years to when that

envelope was opened and the word guitar was on the the inside of it.

What were your initial thoughts when guitar was awarded the 22 World Cup.

Very surprised and to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Obviously there's been a lot of controversy surrounding that process,

but also you and I have spoken on this podcast about what a global game this is and that wasn't always the case the first eight world cups from 1930 through 1966

We're all in Europe or South America and then Mexico got it a couple of times in 70 and 86, but even 86, it was a late replacement for Colombia.

And so through 1990, it just been Europe, South America, and Mexico.

And then you look at it since then, United States and 94, South Korea and Japan in 2002 South Africa in 2010

now Qatar in 2022 so they are spreading it around and giving other parts of the world a

chance to host this tournament which is fascinating to me.

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