Hello and welcome to the total soccer show. My name is Daryl Grove and I'm joined by a man who's got Gold Cup fever. His name is Taylor Rockwell. Hello. Hello, something like that, I guess. So that's what we're going to talk about at the top of this show. So the Gold Cup is underway. It's been going for two or three days now. It has. The US gets going on, what, Tuesday night, first group stage game against Guyana. The Gold Cup is about to begin. Is Gold Cup fever a thing where you're really excited? Or is Gold Cup fever a disease where you're mad at the United States men's national team? I think Gold Cup fever is representative of how I do with most illnesses, which is don't think about it until it becomes too big of an issue.

Because, yeah, I can't claim to have Gold Cup fever well, not really having paid attention to the results thus far.

Okay, that's fair.

Do you have Gold Cup fever for the U.S.?

No.

No.

Why not?

I mean, you know why.

It is not been the most fun time to be a fan of the U.S. men's national team.

I think some of the injuries coming into this tournament and the recent friendly results

have made it difficult to be particularly excited about this coming iteration of the

Gold Cup.

Okay.

So let's start a big picture and we'll frame this as how are we approaching the

Gold Cup.

I would agree that the recent friendly results maybe don't help to raise the enthusiasm level.

But I also think this is a big moment and it's worth paying attention for that reason

because, in my opinion, this Gold Cup is the first proper test of Greg Beyerhalter's principle of play, his style of playing

with the US men's national team, his style of coaching, which gets into a lot of details that we're

still not sure if we need or not. And we'll really know, maybe not after Guyana, but after the

Gold Cup, we'll know, can this thing be successful with the national team or not.

Forgive me already, but I have a question to clarify there. You said it's worth paying attention to this Gold Cup, this US team. Are you concerned that people aren't going to be paying attention? I think there's probably a segment of fans out there who might be like, I do not like this US men's national team. I'm not even going to watch. Yeah. So yeah. All right. That makes sense. And I think that's probably the case because I think there are people who already had frustrations about USA going back to failure to qualify in 2017. And in the way it's been since then, these friendlies didn't help. So I think, yeah, you've probably got a sizable contingent of people who maybe won't necessarily be paying as much attention. Or maybe worse, people might be hate watching like I did with Westworld. You know what mean? And I don't think that's a good way to approach watching the US men's national team. I agree. So maybe we should think about that. Like maybe what's the way that, well, how are we going to watch it, you and I? Maybe you and I are going to watch it differently in the same room? I am, I am to to that end, I am actively trying to reset my fandom of the U.S. men's national team.

...