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

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

I woke up to a beautiful Friday fall morning here in Richmond, Virginia, and then kickoff

happened.

The U.S. was played off the pitch by a Japan team that was head and shoulders better on

the day.

Here with me, to break down the USA's 2-0 loss to Japan, are two good friends. Up first, a man who watched his national team play excellent football while his adopted World Cup national team did the opposite. It's Graham Ruffin. Hi, Graham. Hi, Taylor. I think it must be an unwritten rule that Scotland in the US, there's some sort of gravitational pool there that the two teams can't ever play well at the same time. So it seemed

to be earlier in the year the US was playing well and Scotland was not playing well and now

we are playing well again in the US have this sort of performance. But everyone just breathe

and remember that Nike is the real enemy here for creating those kits

and those kids maybe that's the real reason maybe that's what we've stumbled upon it that is

the root of the issue here people said they would look better with the numbers they do not they

do not in fact look better with the numbers yeah they don't look better with a bit of a

shape about out of this whole game is how bad the kits looked on TV. It did not improve things. Yeah, and they don't look better with a two zero scoreline either. I actually quite like, did anyone see the warm-up kits with the kind of block the splot-chiping? I quite like that. Yeah, I might buy that. Graham, I appreciate your willingness to put criticism where it belongs with our corporate

overlords. I also appreciate the innovative approach to solving the issues that we saw today.

That is what we're going to try to do on this episode. Look at what the U.S. did wrong, what Japan

did right, and then try to maybe find some solutions. It sounds like one of them is we're going

to schedule friendlies for Scotland on match days of the World Cup for the United States. And that way, Scotland will just tell them to play really poorly. That will make the US play well. Is that what we've landed upon? Yeah, but what, well, if it works that way, yeah, if that's, if you can manipulate the gravitational pool to benefit the US, but what if it does the opposite effect? Well, Scotland is playing

well and the US is playing poorly. We're paying them to play poorly, Graham. That's the

bribery. Okay. Sorry. Don't worry about it. Don't chase. Don't press. All good. Yeah. I mean,

by the looks of it, the US were hung over after Octoberfest. I think that's what happened yesterday. I mean, you never know. Stranger Things have happened. Rounding out today's crew is a man who got to see Gio Rana play for the USA and is therefore, I'm assuming, at least 20% happier than the rest of the fan base. It's Joe Lauery. Hi, Joe. Georana was kind of good for stretches of that first step. We were talking about players off mic before we started who were good. And I didn't mention Giorina then, but you sang it right now. He had some really nice moments in this game. Taylor, I've been up since 5 a.m. My time. I've been mainlining the U.S. men's national team right into my veins ever since then. I'm wired. I have the energy of those three USM&T fans that were in the stands in Dusseldorf.

I mean, we, let's go.

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