Hello, everybody, and welcome to the total soccer show. I'm Taylor Rockwell, and tonight I'm going to be joined by Paul Tenorio of The Athletic.

He's on the line to help me make sense of the USA's one-one draw with Uruguay. Was it good? Was it bad? Who did well? Who did the opposite of well? Does any of it even matter? All that plus a dual national conversation that I found particularly interesting, as well as Paul making sense of Burrhalter's Mexico Press Conference, which is useful because Paul was there and also appears to have been the one or one of the ones who asked the question that annoyed Greg Burhalter.

So I appreciate his perspective on that one.

As you have no doubt already noticed, Daryl Grove is not with me in studio.

He is not just being extra quiet, though I sort of wish that were the case. Basically, and don't worry, things are okay. But Daryl is in the hospital. It's not directly related to his treatment or the cancer itself, but it was an unexpected hospitalization, which is why you haven't heard as much from him this week. Normally, he tries to keep everybody updated with what's going on, give Lister's advance notice. In this case, he wasn't able to do so. To his credit, I think he absolutely would record remotely through a fair amount of pain from his hospital bed, but that seemed slightly unnecessary. And also, I felt like maybe I could just talk to Paul and Daryl could sleep. That would be fine. So instead, he's going to get better. I'm going to talk to Paul tonight. We're scheduled to have a few more guests on the program this week to discuss the U.S. international team as well as maybe looming end of MLS's regular season, the start of the playoffs. Maybe some international roundup we shall see. Monday, Ryan will be back with me to break down the weekend's action uh and then darrell should

be with us on tuesday's show as usual so with all that said let's get to my conversation with paul

tinorio of the athletic paul thank you so much for joining me this evening thanks for having me

always a pleasure always a pleasure and i know that you were at home watching this one while also

balancing like taking care of your i'm going to say relative newborn is that a fair way to put it pleasure. And I know that you were at home watching this one while also balancing, like,

taking care of your, I'm going to say relative newborn. Is that a fair way to put it? Yeah, I think so. She's two months old. Oh, that's definitely newborn in my mind. Yeah, she's got a real keen sense for when I'm working. So there's like a 90% chance she'll start crying during this pot during this spot so and and does she already

have like the tactical acumen to help you out is she aware of playing out of the back and

pressing strategies and all that obviously i mean really all we're worried about is making her into

a left-footed playmaker or goals for as i told my wife that's where the money is so that checks out that checks out. Well, I hope she was able to provide you with some insight, and I'm hoping you'll be able to help me kind of balance the insight, because obviously I do not have Daryl with me in studio this evening. So usually I do. I can balance some stuff off him, and when we start recording, we tend to have an idea of how we feel about the game. I don't really have a very good feeling about this game in terms of I don't really know how to feel about it.

So I'm wondering if you do, because I'm starting with kind of a general but weird question, which is essentially, was this an okay performance?

And I can't tell if it was, and I'm just letting the Mexico results color this a little bit, or because we lost so badly and

looked so bad against Mexico, that not looking atrocious is progress in my mind. And so I guess

I'm wondering how you read this game. I think both can be true, right? Like, I think, like,

advancing beyond what it looked like against Mexico is certainly progress. And I think it was also

a very okay performance. You know, I don't think that the intensity was anywhere near the same as it

was against Mexico. And I think that the U.S. created some opportunities against Uruguay. I think

they had some okay moments in the game,

but it wasn't something where you walk away and you say, you know, wow, that was a great

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