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Thank you. Welcome to the big thing on total soccer show, the weekly show where we sink our teeth into the meatiest topics of the day.

Today, we're focusing on the story that's dominated US soccer discussions since it came onto our radar via a Friday news dump last week.

Major League Soccer's controversial decision to pull its first teams from US Open Cup.

The decision has put a stress test on the USS and its commitment to its constitution and its league sanctioning system

and has caused a major fallout that has huge implications for the country's oldest cup competition and perhaps even for the soul of the sport in the USA.

My name's Ryan Bailey. Joining me today, your friend and mine, Joseph Lowry. Hello, Joe. Hello, Ryan. Ready to talk some US

soccer. I can see you getting all excited. Always and forever. This is not the most exciting topic

in terms of bringing joy and bringing a smile to my face.

But we're doing it anyway, darn it. And there have been some positive developments recently. So I am thankful for that. Joe starts the episode with this is not the most exciting topic. Way to go, Joe. Also, join us Graham Ruffman. Hello, Graham. Hello, Ryan. I'm very excited to talk about tennis. I don't get to talk about tennis on this show very often. I presume that's what U.S. Open.

That's what we're going to talk about. It's the golf one, Graham. It's the golf one we're doing today. All right. I still watch that. The football one, not so much. Well, maybe we should talk about that as one of our key points later on, Graham. Also, joining us in this conversation, a guest star on Total Soccer Show. Jeff Ruta from The Athletic joining us today, who's been covering this story and much more in great detail. Good day to you, Jeff. Hey, it's nice to avoid the usual annual churn of his die-hard of Christmas movie this year. So thank you, MLS and US soccer, for forcing that completely out of my lexicon in the weekend. Taylor covered that yesterday. So we're all good on that bingo card. Jeff, Jeff, can I ask, so you had the story out for the athletic sort of right as this news drop from MLS. It absolutely was a Friday news dump that they were going to replace all of their MLS teams with their MLS next pro teams. Sorry, DC United. You don't get to win the U.S. Open Cup. This is the news or was the news as a Friday. Some things have changed since then. How was your Friday? Jeff, can you give us like a little play-by-play here? Like, what were you doing? How angry were you? I guess you being more on Central Time helps a little bit with the Friday news dump.

And you had seen some stuff and you'd been on top of this story earlier on.

What was your Friday like last week?

Yeah, it was supposed to be very chill and mundane.

I think that I'd had a reservation at a cocktail room that I had to cancel.

RIP.

So, I mean, usually look, like the Friday before, like I had to cancel. RIP.

So, I mean, usually look, like, the Friday before, like, I know that this coming Friday will be the Friday before Christmas, but when Christmas falls on a weekend, every entity

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