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

My name is Taylor Rockwell, joining me today to review some Americans abroad and domestic.

We're changing it up this week.

And to preview the USA's World Cup qualifier against El Salvador is the man who, as far as I know, has not been transferred

today on deadline day. It's Joe Lowry. Joe, have you been? Have you moved? Are you in France right now or some other random country? I have not moved. My agent kind of phoned this window in, which is a little bit unfortunate for me. But you know what? It's all right. It's all right. That's what I get for hiring my fictional brother as my agent.

We did get a $150 million offer for Joe from the scuffed podcast, but we felt like we were just going to wait. We wanted to hold it down. Maybe we could bring in Joe and Killing Mbapapay next window, and it's going to be a whole big thing. But until then, Joe, I appreciate your being here today to, as I said, preview the start of World Cup qualifying.

We're going to look fairly in-depth El Salvador and then as in depth at the U.S. men's national team. But we're going to start as we do with our Americans' abroad weekend review. As you pointed out, when we kind of did the plan for this one, we could talk about Americans in Major League Soccer because there are plenty of those who do plenty of things, and we are going to do that.

We have one American in particular we're going to talk about this week, Joe. Oh, yes, we do. Do you want to start there, Taylor? We're going to start in the only downside of talking about Ricardo Pepe. Spoiler, that's who we're going for. is it now we've got to change the title of the show you know and it's we can't go for

americans abroad anymore so that's just some some going for. Is it now we've got to change the title of the show, you know? And we can't go for Americans abroad anymore. So that's just some backhand stuff here. But yeah, the peppy conversation, I'm so pumped. That game that he had over the weekend against Austin FC, he scored a brace. He's up to 11 goals on the season. He's the highest scoring American currently in Major League Soccer. He's two goals away from Diego Fagundez's record for most goals scored by a teenager in a single

MLS season. He is cranking right now, and he's worth changing the title of this show, Taylor.

Yeah, I think we should maybe invite listeners to help us come up with a new title that isn't

just American's Broad Weekend Review because, like, the American Review, that feels vaguely nationalistic. I'm not entirely comfortable with that. So, yes, if people have suggestions, otherwise Joe and I can come up with it ourselves. But it is worth it to get to talk about Ricardo Pepe because Ricardo Pepe is in the U.S. squad, but is also scoring goals and suddenly feels like he could be in that conversation for a starting number nine spot show.

Which is crazy, right? And I, for me, I'm going to pump the break slightly because last week we talked about when the roster dropped. The roster dropped, and I was a little bit hesitant about, you know, I'm probably going to start Sergeant all three games, and I bring Pfok off the bench. but the more I think about it,

the more I do think,

because the games are so close together and because the striker depth chart is still incredibly murky, there is a very strong chance that we see Pepe get some major minutes in this window. And that's awesome. It's not just that he's on the roster. And he is there partially because other guys are injured right zardez isn't there

specifically dk isn't there but i think he could actually do some damage the more i watch him in

mLS and the more i see him get time and and become this really strong goal score in major league

soccer which is an okay league as far as the global game goes in terms of the amount of talent

the more i feel comfortable with him playing some solid minutes. And I think I'm still not fully there yet. I'm more comfortable with Sargent, probably still a bit more comfortable with Pfok. But this is a great time to get Pepey on the field, to get him a chance to develop and play in some important games. And I think he has a lot of skills that could really help the U.S. in some of these games.

And here's why I love Joe Lowry, because I said that about like, like he's in contention for the number nine spot. And then as soon as I said it, as Joe started to speak, I thought, is he though? I'm not sure he is. He's definitely in contention to be in the squad because he made it. I don't know how many minutes is going to get to your point, Joe, but I also agree with you that I am more comfortable with him getting those minutes than I was even when we had that conversation about the roster because at the time it felt like, definitely felt like a planned call up. Like it was something, it wasn't just a, oh, Mexico might be interested. We've got to want up them and get him in there. It seemed like it was a logical

extension of what he has done and what he has been doing. But then, watching his game this

weekend, and this is where I should say, I do not mean this to sound as much like Shade as it's

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