Hello, hello, everybody and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell and it is World Cup season over here in America.

Maybe not right now in terms of the World Cup being played, but we've got the men going to guitar.

We've got the U20s going to the U20 World Cup in Indonesia, the-20 men's, and we've got the U.S. women securing their spot at next summer's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Here with me to talk about a lot of U.S.-centric stuff is my friend and yours, Mr. World Cup himself. It's Joe Lowry. Hi, Joe. Hi, Taylor. Yes, I'm working on getting my business cards changed as we speak to sort of a pit bull adjacent soccer title.

Mr. World. himself. It's Joe Lowry. Hi, Joe. Hi, Taylor. Yes, I'm working on getting my business cards changed as we speak to sort of a

pit bull adjacent soccer title, Mr. World Cup. It's been difficult. I don't know why, but we're

getting closer. I appreciate that effort, Joe. If you were looking to take a vacation and also

cover soccer, which of those three host nations has the most appeal?

Qatar, Indonesia, or New Zealand, Australia combined. I'm guessing I can finish, guess which one

finishes last for you. Yeah, not Qatar. Generally speaking, not all that eager to go to Qatar.

I don't know, Taylor, a whole lot about Indonesia. I don't really know what the landscape is like. I'm just generally ignored about that. So based off of what I know, I think I'd prefer to go to New Zealand in particular over any of those other places, but Australia, other than all the snakes, although I think New Zealand has snakes too. Other than the snakes, I'm down for Australia. And once I learn about Indonesia and know where to go and what to do, I'm all about Indonesia too. All right. Well, maybe we'll be setting you to both because the U-20s are going to be there. I know you have an interest in them. And I know you have an interest in the U.S. women's national team as well. You've been writing about them for back yield. We've been talking about them on the show, but we haven't talked about them much in terms of what they've actually been doing at the Concaf W Championship.

And what they've been doing is securing

World Cup qualification and playing some good soccer. They have now qualified out of their

group for the knockout round. That's why they've qualified for the World Cup. They beat Haiti

in their opener 3-0. They trounced Jamaica last night. 5-0.

Could have been more, I think, against Jamaica, maybe even against Haiti. Joe, two games, two wins, eight goals, World Cup qualification secured. I'm guessing Vlatko is feeling okay with that start to things. Yeah, you'd have to think so, right? It is kind of funny to me, Taylor, just as we sit here, having covered the

U.S. men's national team's path to qualification and how painful that was, the contrast is so real

between that process and these two games win and you're in kind of situation. This was easy for

the U.S. Women's National team. It doesn't mean that they were flawless, but again, I think one of my

macro takeaways from this tournament so far is that

the U.S.'s dominance relative to at least some Concaf nations, pretty much everybody but Canada,

is still alive and well. And that was never really in question coming into this tournament.

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