Hello and welcome everybody to The Total Soccer Show.

It's a proper full review, which means there's music, which means we get the hello and welcome,

which means you get myself, Taylor Rockwell, and you get Joe Lowry.

Returning once again, Joe, how you doing, buddy?

It's been so long since last we spoke.

Yeah, it's been, what, 10 hours, something like that? And this does feel, this feels more natural. The music leading us in that we're not hearing right now, but that listeners will be hearing, that just really sells it for me. So what was your approach to reviewing this one? Because I'm East Coast. So yeah, I think when we wrapped, it was like 1145 last night. I woke up and watched

it again this morning and took some notes. What about you? Did you stay up to get it done? Or did you wake up extra early today? I did. And I had energy fueled by the Phoenix Sun's losing game three of the NBA finals. So I poured myself a bowl of cereal. Well, actually, that's not true. I watched the first half again, then I poured the cereal to get me through the second half.

Then I watched the first half again. Then I poured the cereal to get me through the second half. Then I watched the second half. My favorite part is I went to bed.

That was nice. That's always a positive thing. I promise I'm not stalling, but I am now fascinated. Joe,

what was the bowl of cereal? What was the thing that made you feel better when the sons didn't get that win?

So the bowl of cereal was half, shoot, cocoa pebbles, I believe, and then half peanut butter kashi, which has become sort of an obsession of mine recently. I like it. Very good. Very good soccer watching fuel. Just good for any moment. You know, it's, it's top notch. It's It's, it's, yeah, man, it's the salty and the

sweet, it's the healthy and the garbage. I like it, Joe. I like it. And I promise I am not stalling, because I do want to talk about the U.S. and their one-no-win over Haiti to start their Gold Cup campaign, a game that I think we left last night being confused by, befuddled by, not necessarily positive, but not necessarily negative. And I will also add that I found myself like I was watching it so intently yesterday that I did have a moment where I thought, like, do we really need to rewatch games? Like, is this a thing that we used to do just because, like, Daryl and I would be in studio and we'd be talking during the game, so we kind of wanted to make sure that we'd seen everything? And I was debating whether or not we needed to do just because like darrell and i would be in studio and we'd be talking during the game so we kind of wanted to make sure that we'd seen everything and i was debating whether or not we needed to and yet rewatching it this time we definitely need to because you really do pick up some things when the emotion is removed and you know what's happening you can then just pay attention to the patterns to the sequences to the things that worked and the things that didn't. And I found, I find myself,

I think, cautiously more okay with some things or at least excited for what comes next. Joe,

how are you feeling after your rewatch? I'm feeling certainly more informed. I think we got some

answers to questions that we had. And maybe the answers aren't exactly what we want to hear, what listeners want to hear. But going back through and like you said, once the emotion is out of it and when you know what's going to happen, I just feel like we have a better handle on what's going on. Also, I mean, after we rewatch and after we recorded the quick take hot take, Berhalter had some comments as well that he gave to media. And so it's also helpful. Sometimes he had a comment about how the attack just wasn't good enough, how they weren't creating chances. He didn't like some of the runs in the movement in the box and around the box. I think that stuff is sometimes good to hear when we're watching back through trying to figure out, are we just missing something? Were those runs there? And it's helpful to have the manager of the team come out and say, yeah, some things just weren't sharp enough and it's going to need to be better.

I'm glad you took some notes on that press conference because I saw a few little things in there that I thought were particularly interesting as well.

But before we get to that, before we get to the game itself, it's probably worth also resetting how we got here or what this team is. We talked about it when we did our roster breakdown. We were focused on the players that we're here, but also went into some of the players that were not. Joe, we don't necessarily have to go like player by player name by name, but for maybe folks who missed that one are a little bit confused or just need that refresher, why don't we have some of those big names here? A lot of the big guns, Greg Berthor, wanted to just give some time off. So Christian Polisick and Giorina and that cohort, they just played Nations League, and it was time for them to have a little bit of rest in preseason, in a lot of European clubs, at least, is already starting.

So there's not a ton of rest involved there, but giving them some time off was important. And a lot of the younger guns who are looking to find a more stable club situation or who are looking to impress, say, Jose Marino at club level, they are not here either to give them the best chance to do that. And so what kind of resulted from that is

it's kind of a January camp roster, right? It's very heavy on Major League Soccer players. 19 of the

23 are from MLS. There are four guys then, QuickMath, who are from abroad. And so it is, it's

kind of experimental. And the great purpose of this roster, really of this tournament for the U.S. Yes, they want to win. And that is the goal. And getting a one-nil result in the first game of the group stage is a good step towards that, even if the performance wasn't 100% positive. But really the biggest practical purpose is to prepare the bottom of the U.S.'s future roster for World Cup qualifying.

It's to get maybe guys like Kelan Acosta a few more minutes is to figure out who's our fourth

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