Hello,

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and with me this evening is a gentleman who brings the positivity.

He talked me into feeling more optimistic about this game, and now I think maybe I talked

him into feeling more pessimistic.

It's Joe Lowry.

Hi, Joe.

Hey, Taylor, I do think after we went back through and rewatch that we both ended up meeting somewhere in the middle. And maybe that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think that probably is. So it did occur to me that we could have probably recorded the conversation we had at the end of the game and put that out as a quick take hot take. Maybe we'll do that for the final or for maybe the Gold Cup games.

We did not put out the quick take hot take, but the quick chat we did have was me feeling a little bit more pessimistic,

a little bit unimpressed by some of the moments in the USA's 1-0 win over Honduras in the Nations League semifinal.

Joe was feeling more optimistic.

I was wondering if maybe it was because I thought the U.S. were going to win this by some distance. And obviously that that did not end up being the case. So I'm really excited to see how we sort of come together, if we come together, to find commonality to approach this from the same perspective. Yeah, maybe we'll find common ground. I think we typically do. We don't usually end up looking at things from vastly different perspectives. Just screaming at each other. Right, right. Yeah, that hasn't happened yet. This is such a weird game and such a different game than Switzerland friendly, right? Which almost makes it hard. I mean, we had this long conversation after that Switzerland game and the podcast, I think, was good. But it almost makes it hard even to bring many themes over from that game to this game. Because the big theme from the Switzerland game was the high press and did it get exposed and how was it effective and what moments was it effective? And then in this game, the U.S. didn't press almost at all because it didn't have to. Honduras had no interest in playing with the ball for 95% of this game. So the narrative in what we watched for completely changed. It became, okay, what is the U.S. doing with the ball? And I think they did some things well in the first half especially, and they did some things not so well. And we'll talk about all that stuff and what Honduras did to make life harder for the U.S. as well.

We certainly will, and I'm excited to do so. We're going to get into that first half in the lineups and everything we saw. First, I did want to let listeners know, in honor of the way that game went down. We are going to be taking long, awkward pauses every two to four minutes. the audience to just assume that there are various Hunter and players laying around our recording areas, but we will sort of try to pick it up and get the momentum back. Hopefully it doesn't derail us too much, Joe. Oh my gosh, that was so good, Taylor, and so true. That second half hurt me. That second half hurt me. And it hurt everyone, and that's Concafaf. But man, it doesn't ever get more fun to watch and to sit through something like that. I can't, like, I can't tell if it was because, like, the, was it Supriza and the Union where there was, like, the brawl on the field? Like, at least that had some, like, there was a, like, a boiling over point. and there were various semi-boiling over points in this game, but I think because it never really all kicked off, it just kept being these, oh, another player's down 70 yards away

from the play through a non-contact injury.

That's not suspicious at all.

But we can talk more about Honduras having some cocky-calf moments later. First, let's start with the U.S.'s lineup, shall we? Joe, I know I saw you tweeting that you were mildly unhappy not to see Eunice Musa in the starting 11. What would you have liked to see heading into this game? I mean, it wasn't far off besides that. I have a soft spot in

my heart. I think you do too, Taylor, for Eunice Musa. So I was just sad to not see him in this

lineup after I thought, okay, he doesn't start against Switzerland. That must mean he's ready for

this game. And I get that we weren't going to see Tyler Adams likely. He's still working his way

back to fitness after an injury. So I didn't have any issue seeing Jackson Yule again. Maybe Calin Acosta would have been a better fit, and maybe the game that we saw actually proves that. But either way, it wasn't a great surprise to see Yule, but I was surprised to see Legit over Musa again. And I was bummed out by that, and I think the first half, Musa would have done a much better job than LeJet did, but maybe I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here. The rest of the lineup that Berlter put out, not surprising. Christian Policic starts over Brendan Aronson, not a surprise. Josh Sargent gets another start, Giorana gets another start in that front line. Weston McKinney, Legette, and Ewell, we kind of talked about that already. The only other change besides Stefan coming in golf for Horvath was Anthony Robinson coming in for Reggie Cannon. And to be honest, Taylor, I haven't seen enough of Robinson versus Cannon to have a real preference of the two fullbacks out of those three between Desk, Robinson, Cannon, where is Desk playing at this point? I find it hard to care a whole lot, one versus the other, so I wasn't too

upset about Robinson shifting Dest over to that right side. Yeah, I agree. And I'll say,

like, maybe it requires a third rewatch. Hopefully not. But I will say Dest and Robinson are the

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