This is B-SEN, the Sports Betting Network.

Welcome to the V-SEN weekend morning line on V-SEN, the Sports Betting Network.

It's our two of the V-Sin Weekend Weekend Morning line is John Zistramski alongside Will Hill.

And Will, it is World Cup time.

And I'm not going to pretend to be a soccer expert.

I don't believe you are going to pretend to be a soccer expert.

We need a little help on this.

So Joe Malpha, who worked with me back in the day at S&Y, comes full circle.

Now is a play-by-play soccer study. He's doing MLS games. He's doing games for ESPN. And he is going to be

our liaison here to some World Cup winners. Joe, are you ready to educate myself, Mr. Hill,

any decent audience? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you switched it from expert to liaison because I'm hardly an

expert and I was going to nippy on that. But liaison, I like that, I like that term better for

the tournament. All right, I'll give you both. I think both apply. I'll start here with you.

And we were talking about this before you came on the show. Is this a more wide open World Cup as we're

looking at the odds board? Spain's at plus 475. France is at 5 to 1. England's at plus 650,

Brazil, Argentina, right around that 10 to 1 range. Are there like 7,8 countries that could

go and win this thing, or is that a little too widespread? I think that's right about where it is. And it's sort of counterintuitive, right? You say wide open. You're thinking, oh, maybe there's 12 to 15 teams who could win it. It's the World Cup. There's a group of teams that rise to the top every time the World Cup comes around. In past years, I go back to 2022, that line of demarcation was maybe at about five or six teams. You could pretty much draw that line between Belgium and Norway. I think everything underneath Belgium don't really have a realistic chance unless it's a true magic carpet ride. And then even there with Belgium and Netherlands close to each other, those two teams are still on the outskirts. Everybody on that odds list from Spain down to Germany, if you told me they want it, I wouldn't be surprised. Certainly there's a level of,

it's probably going to be Spain or France more likely than a couple of the others. That's just

the way it goes. The cream genuinely rises at the top every single World Cup, but it's more

open than past years. The USA, what's a realistic expectation? What would you consider success here? Success here. Give us a couple minutes here on Team USA. Yeah, success is relative. Landon Donovan was asked about this recently. I had a great quote on it. If you go back to 2002, that's in the modern era, the standard. The U.S. made the quarter final. But they didn't really play all that well. They beat Portugal in the opener. They got upset in their last game against Poland, a team who was already eliminated. And then they had to wait for South Korea to score a late goal to upset Portugal just to get out of the group stage. And then the way the bracket came out, they ended up matched up with Mexico instead of Italy. So they get a familiar opponent in the round of 16.

They beat them in that famous Dosacero game and they make the quarter. So that's the standard. That's the furthest they've made it in the modern era. But 2014, they played a way better. It was a way better tournament. But they ran into that Belgium and lost an extra time in that game. So success is relative. 2014's showing was much better than 02s, even though O2 was a quarterfinal and 2014 was around a 16.

So I say that it's very, very dependent on the pathway. If the U.S. win the group, they get a little bit of an easier path. They maybe have a way through into a quarter final based on the opponent. Maybe it's Belgium instead of an Argentina in that round of 16. If they come they come in second in the group and i'm sure we'll get there that's where i think they're going to end up finishing in the group the round of 16 opponent is likely argentina if you tell me they beat argentina and make the quarters i'm over the moon happy but if you tell me they lose two to one to argentina in the round of 16 that's very realistic and probably most likely. So success is relative. It really depends on how the bracket opens up. Quarterfinals is awesome. Round of 16 is most likely. So if you want to bet them to make the quarterfinals, there are plus 270. So you're getting some juice there. Round of 16. Joe, minus 130. United States get there? I think so. Yeah, I think that's got to be the bare minimum. There's a lot of hysteria around the team right now just because

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