Hello and welcome, hello and welcome everybody to The Total Soccer show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

I was going to be joined by Paul Aureola today, but he got injured warming up his vocal cords.

So instead, with me to discuss the USA's come from behind victory over Costa Rica in World Cup qualifying is Joe Lowry.

Joe, thank you for being here.

I'm assuming you are all limbered up now, ready to go. No injury concerns heading into this one. I'm limbered up, baby, and I'm Tim Wea in this analogy. And you know what? I am totally cool with that. Yeah, I guess that's a good person to be. So as Joe is Tim Weyer, we are going to be discussing the USA's win over Costa Rica, as I said. But I want to start off going back to the Jamaica game, not the Panama game, but the Jamaica game. Because when we recorded that one, Joe, I think you more so than I was a little bit nervous about, or not nervous, but cautiously optimistic, I guess,

would be a better way to put it. Concerned, we hadn't played a compact defense yet or learned all

that much from that game because Jamaica sort of played into the USA's hands. Then there's the

Panama game, but then we have last night's win. And I'm wondering if you are feeling better

overall about things, or if you're feeling similar to how you were after the Jamaica game in that Costa Rica did some things that probably helped the U.S. get back into this game.

Yes, I'm feeling better about things, but also, yes, Costa Rica did some of the things that you're describing, Taylor.

This was a huge result for the U.S. men's national team. The win here was extremely important. Now the U.S. is sitting second in the Ocho. They have a chance, even if they lose, or I mean, it's likely that they lose to Mexico in the next window. They have a chance to still be second in the table or third, and likely not dropping below that. They could end up in fourth, but they've sort of allowed themselves to have a little bit of wiggle room here. And that doesn't happen without this win. So that's massive, Taylor. There were a lot of really positive aspects of this performance. Overall, I think it was the best performance of World Cup qualifying so far, even though there were a lot of things that helped the U.S. get to this point that maybe were outside of their control. It does need to be said, though, Taylor, and I think this gets to your question a bit, that Costa Rica are probably one of the worst teams in this eight-team group, right? They looked old. Brian Louise looked old, and he's quality on the ball still. And Greg Barthorlter kind of talked about how he can't say anything bad about Brian Ruiz in the post-match press conference when he was asked about that. But I mean, they looked old. They looked slow. You can only beat the teams in front of you. And so the U.S. did that. But I do think it's important to still be measured even after a really great result and a lot of really good bits of performance in this game.

No, I totally agree with you because if we're not going to say Burrhalter out, this team is garbage, set it all on fire after that Panama game, I think it would then be slightly unfair to come back and say like, yep, everything's right with the world. We figured it out. We're going to win the World Cup. And I definitely don't want to go that route either. Instead, I want to to look at this this game as a whole and see what we liked, what we didn't like, what we learned, because I do think that there are some big things I learned.

I feel more confident about certain players than certain combinations of players, but I still

have that lingering fear of like what happens when we do play a team that is much more compact

that does have some speed that can make us pay if we keep turning the ball over. So we're going to talk all those things. We're going to talk goals. We're going to talk where we go from here. But first, let's start with the starting lineups. I was confused when I saw it because there were things, as I tweeted, things I liked, it was nice to see

Chris Richards in there. I was happy to see Eunice Musa start. The MMA or Mamma midfield, whichever one you

prefer of Musa, Adams, and McKinney was back and looked about as strong as it's looked, in my opinion.

I think we both wanted to see Brendan Aronson in there. We were both ready to see Ricardo Pepi. I don't think either one of us saw Paul Ariola starting, which obviously he didn't do to injury, but he was the player that Burrhalter was going to go with. And I literally scratched my head on that one, Joe. Where were you when you saw Ariola in the lineup? I think we might have been scratching our heads simultaneously.

There's a lot of value that Paul Aariola provides, and we've talked about this over and over again. We talk about all these guys, so we have to, right, over and over again, and we learn things along the way. Paul Ariola really hasn't changed his game. He had a great performance against Jamaica. He was running everywhere, and we talked about that. A lot of folks talked about how underrated he is as a player, and to an extent that's true in certain areas.

But then he gets to start again against Pan. He was running everywhere, and we talked about that. A lot of folks talked about how underrated he is as a player.

And to an extent that's true in certain areas. But then he gets to start again against Panama. It doesn't look very good. The entire U.S. team doesn't look very good. And then starting again against Costa Rica last night on Wednesday, he and Eunice Musa would have been the only two players to start all three games. and obviously there's a minutes component to that beyond who starts in every game.

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