Hello, hello, everybody and welcome to the total soccer Show. My name is Taylor Rockwell. Thank you for joining us today. It's a very exciting day because we get to talk about the U.S. women's national team. They've recently wrapped up their send-off series. They're two final friendlies ahead of the Olympics. We're going to talk about those. We're going to talk rososters. We're going to talk Emma Hayes. Expectations for the Olympics. So much to get to

to do so. I am joined by my friend and yours, a man who always loves it when we see Rose LaVelle

pull out of a starting 11 just before the game begins. It's Joe Lowry. Joe, that didn't

give me any anxiety at all. You? So for listeners to peep back the curtain, well, I guess first of all, hello, Taylor, good to see you, good to talk with you. Second of all, to peel back the curtain, Taylor and I were chatting, planning this episode yesterday, and Taylor was like, you know, how concerned, do we think everybody should be about Cat Macario being injured for the Olympics? And I said, you know, at a 100% concern, I'm giving it like a five percent concern,

thinking that there were two exceedingly capable backups to her in this U.S. roster and

Rose LaVelle and Jaden Shaw.

Now Roosevelt doesn't play last night, and Emma Hayes doesn't seem to trust Jaden Shaw.

So I'm going to go ahead and bump that concern percentage up by a significant

margin. Yeah. So we will get to the roots of that worry over the course of this episode and

hopefully assuage those concerns, Joe, and have us both feeling better about this tournament.

Because I do feel better overall. I'm excited for this roster. I'm excited to have Emma Hayes

in charge. And I would say up front that you and I watch the U.S. Women's National Team,

care a lot about them, follow them pretty closely,

but certainly not as closely as many other podcasts out there.

Many people who follow this team and this team only,

who follow the NWSL and the NWSL only.

And so I would encourage people if they want even more like in the weeds conversation

to go out and search out some of those great programs because they are prevalent and they are

very good at what they do. But for Joe and myself, this is going to be a sort of table setting for

the Olympics. We're going to get into some of the basics of the team, some of what's been

happening, catching people up along the way. So Joe, with that in mind, ahead of the Olympics, are there, what do you think is the biggest story that maybe people who haven't been fully following this team might have missed? Is it, and the Hayes being hired? Is it Alex Morgan being left off the roster? Is it something else entirely? Where would you start with this one?

Yeah, I don't know if people would have missed it or not because it feels like maybe the main thing that they would tend to know about this team right now. But Emma Hayes being in charge of the U.S. and reshaping this team in her image is the story for the U.S. women's national team right now. On that story will fade and the story of can the United States rebound after failure in Tokyo and failure in Australia and New Zealand and actually win a tournament.

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