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

My name is Taylor Rockwell and with me this fine evening to break down the USA's emphatic three-no win over Morocco is a man who I would like to immediately ask, was that an emphatic win?

Joe Lowry, how say you?

Are we saying it's emphatic or no?

Taylor, I don't know. Man, you're asking the hard-hitting questions right off the bat. I think this game was a good performance in the United States. I'm not sure that it was emphatic. It felt to me like it was maybe a little closer than that three-no score line, but still, like a good performance, and I think the U.S. was pretty clearly the better team. Would it make you feel better to know that that introduction was slightly more friendly than the original one I was going to use? I think so. What was the original one? A man who would never say anything negative about Cameron Carter Vickers. It's Joe Lowry. Joe, I'm not going to let you defend that yet. We'll get to Cameron Carter Vickers later on because that's exactly what Greg Burrhalter did. He got to him in the second half. We're going to talk about that. But first, we're going to talk about the USA's 3-0 win, starting at the beginning. But I want to get, which is what you tend to do, per had a happy moment for me. But I want to start overall with Joe, like, what were your feelings on this one?

Because to me, this was sort of the overall with Joe, like, what were your feelings on this one?

Because to me, this was sort of the thesis statement in a thing that you and I have discussed

previously, that the U.S. playing in Kanka Kaff and World Cup qualifying against teams that are going

to bunker makes it way harder to get a sort of realistic view of what the U.S. is going to be

because you're playing against

teams with 10 players within 20 yards of the goal. It's tough to break that down. But when we play

better opposition in the World Cup and they're a bit more expansive, a bit more open, my feeling was

maybe we would see the U.S. shine a bit more. And I do feel like they passed that test a little bit, Joe. So I was very happy.

And I used that particular word, that particular language for a reason. Would you say the U.S.

passed the test tonight? And if there were, say, three components that they needed to obtain a

passing grade, what were those components, Joe? Oh, Taylor, you've been doing some pre-game, pre-podcasting reading, not pre-game reading.

I mean, you wrote an article, dude. I read the article. You did the writing. That's amazing. Okay, so I'll get to that in just a second. I'll get to those three, the three parts of this test in just a second, but I want to zoom out really quick. And I guess this is kind of linked together.

Taylor, I want to hit at your point about this Morocco team and really the context of this game. It is a whole

different set of circumstances for this U.S. team in this friendly. And it is a friendly. So it's a

different game inherently than some of those World Cup qualifiers. But it's a different

context surrounding this game because Morocco is largely more talented than a lot of the teams that the U.S. played in the Ocho. I don't remember exactly what the FIFA ranking is, but 22, 24, something like that for Morocco, FIFA rankings aren't gospel, but that's still a decent indication of where this team is. They came out and played a little bit, and for the U.S., I think that was a a really good test and now i'll get to that second bit i did write an article at uh full time for backhield so the three bits and pieces of this test i think the u.s passed is one they got their healthy core players on the field together we saw polisic we saw timwaya heses ferrara we saw brendan arons and Musa and Adams and Jedi. We saw those players on the field together, and that is really important in this window with six, now only five games left before the World Cup. The second thing is we saw some new faces, right? We got new faces in the second half. CCV maybe isn't quite a new face, but you can still kind of lump him into that group. CCV, Haji Wright, Joe Scali, Malik Tillman, shoot, and then we saw De LaTorei and Weston McKenney, who aren't new faces. But still, we got some new looks at those players and some decent data on them in that time. And the last thing, and we'll talk plenty about this later, I'm sure, is the U.S. added a new wrinkle. This is like, this is extra credit

on the test for me. It wasn't something that we absolutely had to see. But Taylor, I've been thinking more and more about how, one, how little time there is before the World Cup and two, how much time that these coaches and coaching staffs from England and from whoever else the U.S. is going to have to face in that group and we still don't know the full group yet but how much time these

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