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Thank you. Hello, hello, Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Soccer show. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and on today's

episode, we're breaking down the USA's comprehensive victory over Ghana in their friendly on Tuesday

night. We said after the Germany game, that we shouldn't overvalue friendly results, as

they're more about gaining experience and opportunity for players. But Joe Lowry, clearly this result means we're winning the World Cup, right? That's what I was hoping you were going with this, because that's where I was going to take it if you didn't take it there. I think we can just cancel 2026 now, pretty much. Ghana's been conquered. That's like the biggest dragon there is for some

reason for the United States men's national team. I think we're done here, Taylor. I think we are.

I mean, we talked about this a little bit in the Old Western Questions episode yesterday, but yes,

I have some PTSD about playing Ghana, even though we did sort of excise some of those demons

with the win in 2014, but there's the loss in 2010.

There's the loss in 2006 as well.

And so they are a team that I am always nervous about, even if they don't seem particularly strong.

This kind of team seemed like they were decently strong.

Then they lose to Mexico.

Then after this result, I'm thinking, we can take away certain things from this one. But I don't think I would go so far as to say, like, we beat a strong and comprehensively put together Ghana team. So this is, all is right with the world. Everything is great. Yeah, it's not really a black and white thing. In this game, it's much more of a gray thing coming out of this match. Taylor, you know who's not particularly afraid of Ghana? It's Angola. It's Madagascar. It's Niger. I mean, it's, you can run through these teams that they have failed to beat in, in much more important games than this one against the United States, which is why I think it is important, and clearly you do too, to sort of temper our expectations and our takeaways. And I basically wrote that after this game for Backield. I wrote something along the lines of, there's not a ton we can take away. Now, it's not to say there's nothing, and we'll spend an hour talking about some fun things we can take away, because this game was awesome. Like, I also want to make sure we get that out there from the start. Yeah. This first half was the most fun I've had watching the U.S. play since, well, probably since the first 30 minutes of the Germany game. But, like, in general, it was awesome. And basically every U.S. player who spoke to the media and whose comments have come out after last night's game said as much. Timwayo was like, yeah, we were balling.

Balagan was more involved.

He talked about that.

Greg Barrealthor was complimenting Giorina, obviously, because Giorina was really, really good in this game. So, Gio Dest was cooking and said basically, we want to do more. Like, he was bummed. We didn't smash Ghana by more. I think he used the word smash in his post-game press conferences.

Like this, this U.S. team put on an unbelievable performance in the first 45 minutes. It was so much fun to watch at the same time, and this is the things can be two things. It only means so much because it is Ghana, and the U.S. should be expecting to beat teams like Ghana. Mexico just beat them 2-0. You said that, right? So there are levels to this game, and I think if we've learned one thing from this window,

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