Hello Sunshine, I'm Alexi Lawless and welcome to a special edition of 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. This special episode I'm joined by my friend,

oh my colleague, Jen Cooper, a soccer

savant and a women's soccer researcher and writer and analyst extraordinary.

Incredible background as I said when it comes to soccer in general and in

particular when it comes to women's soccer I have worked with her over the years

we have worked with her when it comes to World Cups she does a tremendous amount of

work also when it comes to the NWSL.

And let's be honest, she's been around a long time as we all have.

When we talk about this type of subject, I wanted to go to get somebody who has context that has

history that has an understanding of the topic that we are going to talk

about today. Jen can you hear me? How are you? I can hear you. I'm feeling pretty

good other than the past few days have been kind of mind numbing, but when you're talking about history and context, you know, I'm going to say it's not really a surprise that something's finally come to a head.

Okay, so I want to make sure that everybody understands what we are going to talk about today.

And I guess I want to preface this by saying, you know, we're going to talk about some things here where there are accusations.

And I know this day and age where all it takes is even a tweet to destroy somebody and it seems

that you are guilty until proven innocent.

I want to make sure that these are accusations.

Everybody understands these are accusations.

And in many cases, people have denied those accusations.

And there's still a whole lot to play out.

...