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Learn more at vertexinck.com. Hello, hello, Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

Joining me today, we have a man who has not yet, at time of recording at least, left his

position to take a job in the Netherlands.

It's Joe Lowry.

Hi, Joe.

Thanks for sticking around.

You know, Taylor, I knew this was a big show for us.

I figured I would wait until after the show to tell you.

Now I guess I'll just tell everyone.

I'm going to be on whatever the total soccer show is in Dutch. Is that just the total football show? That feels wrong to say it that way. No, I'm not going anywhere because, Taylor, one thing I love so much about the fact that you and I can see each other on these shows is how happy you look and how happy it makes me when your arms go above your head as you do your enthusiastic intro. It gets me jazz. It gets me amped. This is good stuff. Gotta get that energy going trying to channel my inner Jimmy Conrad. To talk about the USA's 2-1 friendly loss to Serbia, we're going to do that in a little bit. Joe was there.

Joe's got plenty of thoughts. I've got a few thoughts of my own. But first, we were both on a conference call. Always an exciting way to begin a show. U.S. soccer had another press conference today in which they announced the departures of Ernie Stewart and Brian McBride. We knew Brian McBride was leaving

his position as men's GM, but Ernie Stewart will be leaving the overall GM position to take a gig

with PSV. Joe, pausing there for a moment, not to put you on the spot, do you know what the gig is?

Is he like sporting director? I feel like it was kept vague, but maybe that was just me not

reading detailed enough. Yeah, so Ernie Stewart was U.S. Soccer Sporting Director, and Brian McBride was the USM&T's general manager. So the structure, which I think is just helpful to lay out the foundation here for everybody because this is kind of in the weed stuff and maybe people out there don't know. So Ernie Stewart was hired as the USM&T's general manager back in 2018. So that was

sort of the first step in U.S. soccer building out some of their sporting department. He led the process to hire Greg Berlter, which finished up when Burralthor was hired in December of 2018, was then promoted to sporting director from USM&T GM. Lots of letters there. I apologize.

Was promoted to sporting director in August of 2019. Then helped hire Brian McBride to essentially

...