Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the total soccer show. My name is Taylor Rockwell. With me today is a gentleman who always makes my provisional roster. It's Joe Lowry. Hello, Joe. It's a true honor to be on your provisional roster. Taylor, I'll play for your team anytime, man. I appreciate that. We have lots of competitions to cover this summer to talk about this summer.

So you're in the mix. We're not sure where you're going to be, Joe. Is it going to be Euros? Is it going to be Gold Cup? Is it going to be Olympics? Is it going to be Nations League? Maybe Copeland. Who knows? Do you have a tournament you're most excited for? Oh, man. I think I genuinely am, this sounds so sad and conga-calf-centric and like U.S.

Men's national team, ridiculous fanboy.

But I think I am most excited for the Nations League, which again, sounds so lame.

I'm pro-Nations League, by the way.

But, I mean, it's just, it's these two games in the middle, early June.

But I'm excited because of how Berhalter and company have structured that little window. They've got extra friendlies on the outside of these two games to replicate World Cup qualifying. And that's what I'm really most looking forward to is when a World Cup qualifying starts in September. But until that happens, Nations League for the summer is the closest thing we're actually going to get to that.

And what do you mean when you say to sort of like mirror World Cup qualifying this time around?

Yeah.

So because of COVID in games being postponed from the last year and changed, Conca Calf World Cup qualifying is all compressed.

It's congested.

And so now instead of two game windows, it's three game windows. And that's hard, right? That's a big difference, especially when you're thinking about how to manage minutes and how to get different players on the field. How do you get the most out of a group when you're playing more often than you would normally play? And so this is the chance for Berhalter to try things out. And it's four games instead of three, and not all players are going to be available for the first game of this window because of the Champions League final, which is a pretty good reason for Christian Polisic and Zach Stefan, who we assume will be on this Nation's League roster. They're on the provisional roster. They're likely to be on that final roster. It's not going to be a perfect dress rehearsal, but it's going to be close. And I think it's really wise that the U.S. has chosen to structure their late May, early June in this way. I agree with you. And so to give our listeners a schedule, if they don't already have it, May 30th, they're playing in Switzerland. Then we've got the game on June 3rd, the semifinal against Honduras.

If the U.S. wins that, they go to the final where they would meet the winner of Costa Rica versus Mexico. They lose that. They'll go to the third place game. Both of those will be happening on June 6th. So you've got friendly, Nations League, Nations League, final or third place game. And then to round it out, we've got a game against Costa Rica in Salt Lake City on June 9th.

So as Joe said, Nations League, final or third place game, and then to round it out, we've got a game against Costa Rica in Salt Lake City on June 9th.

So as Joe said, four games.

Burrhalter, I believe in the past, has said that the team that plays in these games is unlikely to suit up in the Gold Cup.

So we might get a lot of roster change.

Maybe we'll have a few overlaps, but for the most part, I think we're

going to see the strongest possible teams, hopefully playing the strongest possible soccer in

these four games. With that in mind, Joe, are there any names on the provisional roster that

stood out to you or any names not on there that stood out to you? I think that second part

is actually the most interesting piece here. To me,

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