Welcome to the total soccer show and our review of the USMNT's friendly encounter with Belgium in Atlanta,

which ended in a 5-2 defeat that will hopefully give us many talking points and lessons ahead of this summer's World Cup.

My name's Ryan Bailey.

Join to me today in a power trio.

We've got Taylor Rockwell.

Hello, Taylor. Hello, Ryan Bailey. me today in a power trio we've got Taylor Rockwell hello Taylor

hello Ryan Bailey it's weird that like a 5-2 loss would normally have me feeling pretty

bummed out but I feel like because we did the live watch along and I got to hang with you all for

two hours it feels a little bit better because I feel like we've already worked through some stuff

even if I'm still a little bit confused as to how the US looked so bad at times. Indeed. More on that over the coming minutes. But yes, Taylor, thank you to everybody who joined us on our YouTube channel for our live watchlong. We'll do a few more of those because it was indeed very good fun. Also on that feed was Joe Lowry. Hello, Joe. Hey, guys, it really was a blast. I very much enjoyed getting to watch games together.

I'm looking forward to doing that together at the World Cup,

which you talked a bit about that on the live show as well, that we are going to be doing a for real live show, like a live in-person show, where we're in the flesh and you also are in the flesh. listener, if you're actually going to be there with us at the El Ray Theater in Los Angeles,

we've got pre-sale tickets only open right now, but we will have real tickets open soon. So if you're a Patreon subscriber, then you can go and check all this stuff out now. Details over on the Patreon and in the Discord. But it was a blast. Like, I'm both stoked about that and getting to talk about it and release it into the world was a delight. and actually getting to watch Slack with you guys. It's always fun too. Yes, very much, Ojojo, very excited about the summer.

And as you mentioned

us spending time together with our friends our listeners in los angeles if you're on the west coast

patreon dot com slash total soccer show you can get a pre-sell link in our patreon at the moment to come and see

the live show the el ray theater famous, famous El Ray Theater in Los Angeles. Sounds very glamorous, doesn't it, Joe? Yeah, very glamorous, and then you realize you're going to go see a soccer podcast? Yeah. Well, you know, don't think about it too hard. Just be there. Just come, just hang out. It's going to be great. Glamorous and nerdy. It can be two things. Very good. All right. Why don't we get straight into the action, Taylor, of the game, which of course we all watched together on our YouTube channel, like and subscribe, etc. Initial thoughts on this one, Taylor. I think when we were watching along, certainly in the first half, certainly in the first half of the first half, we were all quite bullish about the US performance. It was quite an entertaining game as well. It was quite back and forth. Basketball-esque, if you will. I think there were a lot of positives to be taken from the performance, particularly the first half. Is that fair to say? I think so. I think it is. Joe has watched more, uh, rewatch, I should say more of the first half than I.

I think I was largely pretty positive, uh, at halftime with the way things went, certainly less so in the second half.

I do think there is a feeling of, I, the only way I can say it is like embarrassment, as silly as that might sound at, at full time.

Just because I think I have been so positive about the U.S. of late, I've really kind of enjoyed, as I said in the pregame, like what Pocitino has done, the way he has built this squad, the way he has built up kind of a feisty competitiveness. I felt like maybe the U.S. would lose. I think my prediction was 2-0 to Belgium, but I thought we

would still kind of see a more cohesive U.S. team. And I think there are reasons why we didn't

always see that. We'll get into the lineup and the approach and kind of some of the ways

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