Hello and welcome everybody to The Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

Joining me this evening, tonight is a man who usually likes Giazzi Zardez, but tonight

loves him because he saved us from extra time.

It's Joe Lowry.

Joe, we're going to be up early for the U.S.

Women's National Team Knockout Round Game versus the Netherlands. How important was Jossi scoring and regulation for you to keep your sleep schedule somewhat normal? Oh, it's massive. Jossi's artist is a man of the people. He knows that you and Jordan and I and everybody else is going to be up for that U.S. Women's National Team game tomorrow. He wants to see that team win. And he wants us, Taylor, most importantly, to be well rested when we break that thing down. So thanks, Josh. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that he was willing to make that sacrifice for us. I'm assuming he wanted to play that extra 30 minutes. But he knew America needed to sleep in preparation for that game against the Netherlands.

So he did the hero's duty. We are here to talk about the USA's one-day win over Qatar in the

semi-final of the Gold Cup. It pushes the U.S. through to the final where they will meet the winner

of Canada and Mexico. That game is being played as we speak. I do not know the score, but I look forward to that final, regardless of who it is. Joe, we're going to talk about what went sort of wrong for the U.S. in the first half, what Qatar did to frustrate the United States, why the second half looked a little bit different and where we go from here. But I want to start with Qatar, because I had a few people message me during the game to

ask, number one, why is Qatar in the Gold Cup? Did they join Kaka Kaff? And number two, why aren't we

beating a team that I used to destroy in FIFA? And I think both of those are fair questions, because

it is slightly confusing to have a guest team playing in the Gold Cup, but it's also confusing to have Qatar looking like a very good, exciting, attacking team.

I know you wrote a very good piece detailing what they like to do in terms of their tactics

defensively in an attack for the athletic.

Joe, take it away.

Tell us about Qatar and how they have done what they have done to get to where they are.

Okay. So Qatar from a soccer standpoint is doing some really interesting things as they prepare for

the 2022 World Cup. They've had a decade basically to prepare for that tournament and to be able to

fuel the team that's not going to get embarrassed on their home soil. And so a big part of that project

has been developing players locally in Qatar and also bringing in players from other countries

as they can, as well as that development. They've also just been playing a ton of games. John

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